the 'metaphysical' had the current of poetry descended in a direct
line from them, as it descended in a direct line to them ? They
would not, certainly, be classified as metaphysical. The possible
interests of a poet are unlimited ; the more intelligent he is the
better ; the more intelligent he is the more likely that he will have
interests : our only condition is that he turn them into poetry, and
not merely meditate on them poetically. A philosophical theory
which has entered into poetry is established, for its truth or
falsity in one sense ceases to matter, and its truth in another sense
is proved. The poets in question have, like other poets, various
faults. But they were, at best, engaged in the task of trying to find
the verbal equivalent for states of mind and feeling. And this
means both that they are more mature, and that they wear better,
than later poets of certainly not less literary ability.
It is not a permanent necessity that poets should be interested
in philosophy, or in any other subject. We can only say that it
appears likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present,
must be difficult. Our civilization comprehends great variety and
complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a
refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results.
The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more
allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary,
language into his meaning. (A brilliant and extreme statement of
this view, with which it is not requisite to associate oneself, is that
of 11. Jean Epstein, La Poisie d'aujourd-hui.) Hence we get something which looks very much like the conceit - we get, in fact, a method curiously similar to that of the 'metaphysical poets',
similar also in its use of obscure words and of simple phrasing.
0 geraniums diaphanes, guerroJ•eurs sorti/eges,
Sacrileges monomanes!
Emballages, divergondages, douches! 0 pressoirs
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ESSAYS OF GENERAL I ZA T I O N
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Des vendanges des grands soirs!
Layettes aux abois,
.
ThJ'rses au fond des bois!
Transfusions, represailles,
Relevailles, compresses et /'eternal potion,
Angelus! n' en pouvoir plus
De debacles nuptiales! de debacles nuptiales!
The same poet could write also simply :
Elle est bien loin, elle pleure,
Le grand vent se lamente aussi . . .
Jules Laforgue, and Tristan Corbiere in many of his poems, are
nearer to the 'school of Donne' than any modern English poet.
But poets more classical than they have the same essential quality
of transmuting ideas into sensations, of transforming an observation into a state of mind.
Pour /'enfant, amoureux de cartes et d'estampes,
L'univers est ega/ a SOil vaste appetit.
Ah, que le monde est grand a Ia clarte des lampes!
Aux J'eux du souvenir que le monde est petit!
In French literature the great master of the seventeenth century
Racine - and the great master of the nineteenth - Baudelaire - are
in some ways more like each other than they are like anyone else.
The greatest two masters of diction are also the greatest two
psychologists, the most curious explorers of the soul. It is
interesting to speculate whether it is not a misfortune that two of
the greatest masters of diction in our language, Milton and
Dryden, triumph with a dazzling disregard of the soul. If we
continued to produce Miltons and Drydens it might not so much
matter, but as things are it is a pity that English poetry has
remained so incomplete. Those who object to the 'artificiality' of
Milton or Dryden sometimes tell us to 'look into our hearts and
write'. But that is not looking deep enough ; Racine or Donne
looked into a good deal more than the heart. One must look into
the cerebral cortex, the nervous system, and the digestive tracts.
May we not conclude, then, that Donne, Crashaw, Vaughan,
Herbert and Lord Herbert, Marvell, King, Cowley at his best,
are in the direct current of English poetry, and that their faults
should be reprimanded by this standard rather than coddled by
antiquarian affection ? They have been enough praised in terms
which are implicit limitations because they are 'metaphysical' or
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THE META P H Y S I C A L POETS
'witty', 'quaint' or 'obscure', though at their best they have not
these attributes more than other serious poets. On the other hand,
we must not reject the criticism of Johnson (a dangerous person
to disagree with) without having mastered it, without having
assimilated the Johnsonian canons of taste. In reading the
celebrated passage in his essay on Cowley we must remember that
by wit he clearly means something more serious than we usually
mean today ; in his criticism of their versification we must remember in what a narrow discipline he was trained, but also how well trained ; we must remember that Johnson tortures chiefly the chief
offenders, Cowley and Cleveland. It would be a fruitful work, and
one requiring a substantial book, to break up the classification of
Johnson (for there has been none since) and exhibit these poets
in all their difference of kind and of degree, from the �e
music of Donne to the faint, pleasing tinkle of Aurelian Townshend -
between a Pilgrim and Time is one of the
few regrettable omissions from the excellent anthology of
Professor Grierson.
THE FUNCT I ON OF CR I T I C I S M
Writing several years ago on the subject of the relation of the
new to the old in art, I formulated a view to which I still adhere,
in sentences which I take the liberty of quoting, because the
present paper is an application of the principle they express :
'The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives ; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever
so slightly, altered ; and so the relations, proportions, values of
each work of art toward the whole are readjusted ; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will
not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the
present as much as the present is directed by the past.'
I was dealing then with the artist, and the sense of tradition
which, it seemed to me, the artist should have ; but it was generally
a problem of order ; and the function of criticism seems to be
essentially a problem of order too. I thought of literature then, as
I think of it now, of the literature of the world, of the literature
of Europe, of the literature of a single country, not as a collection
of the writings of individuals, but as 'organic wholes', as systems
in relation to which, and only in relation to which, individual
works of literary art, and the works of individual artists, have
their significance. There
is accordingly something outside of the
artist to which he owes allegiance, a devotion to which he must
surrender and sacrifice himself in order to earn and to obtain his
unique position. A common inheritance and a common cause
unite artists consciously or unconsciously : it must be admitted
that the union is mostly unconscious. Between the true artists of
any time there is, I believe, an unconscious community. And, as
our instincts of tidiness imperatively command us not to leave to
the haphazard of unconsciousness what we can Mttempt to do
consciously, we are forced to conclude that what happens
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THE FUNCT I O N O F C R I T I C I S M
unconsciously we could bring about, and form into a purpose, if
we made a conscious attempt. The second-rate artist, of course,
cannot afford to surrender himself to any common action ; for his
chief task is the assertion of all the trifling differences which are
his distinction : only the man who has so much to give that he can
forget himself in his work can afford to collaborate, to exchange,
to contribute.·
If such views are held about art, it follows that a fortiori whoever holds them must hold similar views about criticism. When I say criticism, I mean of course in this place the commentation and
exposition of works of art by means of written words ; for of the
general use of the word 'criticism' to mean such writings, as
Matthew Arnold uses it in his essay, I shall presently make
several qualifications. No exponent of criticism (in this limited
sense) has, I presume, ever made the preposterous assumption
that criticism is an autotelic activity. I do not deny that art may
be affirmed to serve ends beyond itself; but art is not required to
be aware of these ends, and indeed performs its function, whatever that may be, according to various theories of value, much better by indifference to them. Criticism, on the other hand, must
always profess an end in view, which, roughly speaking, appears
to be the elucidation of works of art and the correction of taste.
The critic's task, therefore, appears to be quite clearly cut out for
him ; and it ought to be comparatively easy to decide whether he
performs it satisfactorily, and in general, what kinds of criticism
are useful and what are otiose. But on giving the matter a little
attention, we perceive that criticism, far from being a simple and
orderly field of beneficent activity, from which impostors can be
readily ejected, is no better than a Sunday park of contending and
contentious orators, who have not even arrived at the articulation
of their differences. Here, one would suppose, was a place for
quiet cooperative labour. The critic, one would suppose, if he is
to justify his existence, should endeavour to discipline his personal
prejudices and cranks - tares to which we are all subject - and
compose his differences with as many of his fellows as possible, in
the common pursuit of true judgment. When we find that quite
the contrary prevails, we begin to suspect that the critic owes his
livelihood to the violence and extremity of his opposition to other
critics, or else to some trifling oddities of his own with which he
contrives to season the opinions which men already hold, and
which out of vanity or sloth they prefer to maintain. We are
tempted to expel the lot.
Immediately after such an eviction, or as soon as relief has
abated our rage, we are compelled to admit that there remain
certain books, certain essays, certain sentences, certain men, who
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ESSAYS OF GENER A L I Z A T I O N · 1 9 1 8- 1 9 3 0
have been 'useful' to us. And our next step is to attempt to classify
these, and find out whether we establish any principles for
deciding what kinds of book should be preserved, and what aims
and methods of criticism should be followed.
I I
The view of the relation of the work of art to art, of the work of
literature to literature, of 'criticism' to criticism, which I have
outlined above, seemed to me natural and self-evident. I owe to
Mr. Middleton Murry my perception of the contentious character
of the problem ; or rather, my perception that there is a definite
and final choice involved. To Mr. Murry I feel an increasing debt
of gratitude. Most of our critics are occupied in labour of
obnubilation ; in reconciling, in hushing up, in patting down, in
squeezing in, in glozing over, in concocting pleasant sedatives, in
pretending that the only difference between themselves and others
is that they are nice men and the others of very doubtful repute.
Mr. Murry is not one of these. He is aware that there are definite
positions to be taken, and that now and then one must actually
reject something and select something else. He is not the anonymous writer who in a literary paper several years ago asserted that Romanticism and Classicism are much the same thing, and that
the true Classical Age in France was the Age which produced the
Gothic cathedrals and - Jeanne d'Arc. With Mr. Murry's formulation of Classicism and Romanticism I cannot agree ; the difference seems to me rather the difference between the complete and the fragmentary, the adult and the immature, the orderly and the chaotic. But what Mr. Murry does show is that
there are at least two attitudes toward literature and toward
which he professes appears to imply that the other has no stand
�ng in England whatever. For it is made a national, a racial
ISSUe.
Mr. Murry makes his issue perfectly clear. 'Catholicism', he
says, 'stands for the principle of unquestioned spiritual authority
outside the individual ; that is also the principle of Classicism in
literature.' Within the orbit within which Mr. Murry's discussion
moves, this seems to me an unimpeachable definition, though it
is of course not all that there is to be said about either Catholicism
or Classicism. Those of us who find ourselves supporting what
Mr. Murry calls Classicism believe that men cannot get on without giving allegiance to something outside themselves. I am aware that 'outside' and 'inside' are terms which provide unlimited
opportunity for quibbling, and that no psychologist would
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THE FUNCT I O N O F C R I T I C I S M
tolerate a discussion which shuffled such base coinage ; but I will
presume that Mr. Murry and myself can agree that for our purpose these counters are adequate, and concur in disregarding the admonitions of our psychological friends. If you find that you
have to imagine it as outside, then it is outside. If, then, a man's
interest is political, he must, I presume, profess an allegiance to
principles, or to a form of government, or to a monarch ; and if he
is interested in religion, and has one, to a Church ; and if he
happens to be interested in literature, he must acknowledge, it
seems to me, just that sort of allegiance which I endeavoured to
put forth in the preceding section. There is, nevertheless, an
alternative, which Mr. Murry has expressed. 'The English
writer, the English divine, the English statesman, inherit no rules
from their forebears ; they inherit only this : a sense that in the last
resort they must depend upon the inner voice.' This statement
does, I admit, appear to cover certain cases ; it throws a flood of
light upon Mr. Lloyd George. But why 'in the last resort' ? Do
they, then, avoid the dictates of the inner voice up to the last
extremity ? My belief is that those who possess this inner voice
are ready enough to hearken to it, and will hear no other. The
inner voice, in fact, sounds remarkably like an old principle which
has been formulated by an elder critic in the now familiar phrase
of 'doing as one likes'. The possessors of the inner voice ride ten
in a compartment to a football match at Swansea, listening to the
inner voice, which breathes the eternal message of vanity, fear,
and lust.
Mr. Murry will say, with some show of justice, that this is a
wilful misrepresentation. He says : 'If they (the English writer,
divine, statesman) dig deep enough in their pursuit of selfknowledge - a piece of mining done not with the intellect alone, but with the whole man - they will come upon a self that is
universal' - an exercise far beyond the strength of our f()otball
enthusiasts. It is an exercise, however, which I believe was of
enough interest to Catholicism for several handbooks to be
written on its practice. But the Catholic practitioners were, I
believe, with the possible exception of certain heretics, not
palpitating Narcissi ; the Catholic did not believe that God and
himself were identical. 'The man who truly interrogates himself
will ultimately hear the voice of God', Mr. Murry says. In theory,
this leads to a form of pantheism which I maintain is not European - just as Mr. Murry maintains that 'Classicism' is not English. For its practical results, one may refer to the verses of
lludibras.
I did not realize that Mr. Murry was the spokesman for a considerable sect, until I read in the editorial columns of a dignified 7 1
ESSAYS O F G ENER ALI ZAT I O N
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daily that 'magnificent as the representatives of the classical
genius have been in England, they are not the sole expressions of
the English character, which remains at bottom obstinately
"humorous" and nonconformist'. This writer is moderate in