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FAMOUS ENGLISH POETS

THE MENTOR

SERIAL No. 44

DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE

MENTOR GRAVURES

BYRON

SHELLEY

KEATS

WORDSWORTH

TENNYSON

BROWNING

Modern English poetry is rich not only in its quality, but in its variety, both of theme and of manner. The exuberant imagination and splendid profusion of Swinburne are in striking contrast with the restraint and clearness of style of Matthew Arnold; the fluency and narrative faculty of William Morris, with the strongly etched and powerfully phrased work of Francis Thompson and Henley. The classical dignity of Landor, the humor of Hood, the seriousness of mood of Clough , the pictorial genius of Rossetti, the fresh invention of Stevenson and Kipling, suggest the range of poetic production of an age not matched in wealth of genius since the age of Shakespeare. Among the throng of poets who made lasting contributions to English literature during the nineteenth century, six may be regarded as most representative.

Byron died ninety-one years ago; but, although there has been a great change in the way poets look at life and in their way of writing verse, he holds his place as one of the greater poets, not only in reputation, but in popular regard; and for two reasons,--he was one of the born singers to whom men will always stop to listen, and he was also a poet of revolt. He is not read in this country as Browning and Kipling are read; nor, on the other hand, is he neglected as Milton and Landor are neglected. His stormy nature and his tempestuous career add an element of personal interest to the claims of his poetry upon the attention of reading people today, and he is one of those men of genius about whom it is difficult to be judicial: those who like his work become his partizans, those who dislike him charge him with insincerity and immorality.

It must be frankly confessed that Byron had moments of insincerity, and that he often posed; but he was largely the victim of his temperament. Mr. Symonds has said of him that he was well born and ill bred. He had noble impulses, and he had the strong passions that give energy of feeling and vitality of imagination to many of the greatest men and women; but he had neither clearness of moral vision nor steadiness of purpose. He had great genius; but he was neither intellectually nor morally great. And yet he had such force of mind and eloquence that Goethe, who was the greatest critic of his time, if not of all time, declared that the English could show no poet to be compared with him.

BYRON'S PLACE AMONG POETS

What ground was there for an estimate which gave Byron a place by himself among English poets? "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" was a telling satire written by a confident boy of genius, effective in "hits" which the time understood, but defective in critical insight; "Childe Harold," the early stanzas of which appeared after travel had inspired him, was a splendid piece of rhetoric which often attains a very noble eloquence. "The Giaour" , "Manfred," the "Corsair," "Lara" , stirred an age which was in revolt against rigid and often artificial conventions. "Don Juan" , like "Childe Harold," is a poetic journal which lacks dramatic unity, but contains descriptions of compelling beauty. Some of the shorter pieces, like the "Prisoner of Chillon," "When We Two Parted," "She Walks in Beauty," have the power of deep feeling when it becomes eloquent; while such stanzas as "The Isles of Greece," scattered through "Childe Harold," make history as moving as poetry.

Byron had richness of imagination rather than wealth of thought; he had a full-throated, operatic voice rather than purity of tone; he had splendor rather than clarity of mind; he had great natural force of genius rather than command of the resources of art. He was generous in impulse, enthusiastic in temper, and he loved liberty. It was the presence of these qualities in his nature, and his spirit of revolt, that led Mazzini , to predict, "The day will come when Democracy will remember all that it owes to Byron."

SHELLEY

Shelley, too, was a lover of freedom; but of a freedom that was the breath of the soul rather than social or political liberty. He lacked humor, he bore no yoke in his youth, his father was a matter-of-fact and eccentric tyrant, and the boy of genius lost his way in a world which nobody helped him to understand. When one reads the story of his brief and confused career, of the shabby and immoral things he did, it must be remembered that he discovered how to fly, but nobody taught him how to walk. He was always a splendid, wayward child, to whom visions were more real than facts. He died at thirty, and his life was only beginning.

But what a splendid prelude it was! "Alastor," the "Stanzas Written in Dejection," the "Ode to the West Wind," "The Cloud," the immortal lines "To a Skylark," are flights of poetry which reflect the splendor of the sky under which they seem to move as if impelled by wings. "Prometheus Unbound," "The Revolt of Islam," and other long poems show his hatred of tyranny, whether human or divine, his ardent passion for humanity. He was only at times a great artist: his verse often lacks substance and reality, and has the beauty and remoteness of cloud pictures. His critical faculty was obscured by the spontaneity and facility of his creative moods; but he had the power of growth. His best work was at the end of his career, and he died at the moment the signs of maturity were showing themselves. He had no creed save that of resistance to tyranny, and he defined nothing; but he had noble visions, a beautiful voice, a splendid faith. With all the faults of his youth, and they were of tragic seriousness, there was something angelic about him, and he made life richer and more splendid.

KEATS' LOVE OF BEAUTY

The poets of the first quarter of the last century died young: Byron at thirty-six, Shelley at thirty, Keats at twenty-six. What Byron's future would have been no one will venture to predict; but Shelley and Keats were rapidly gaining in power when the end came. The first was the fiery leader of revolt, the second was the idealist, concerned, not with present oppressive traditions, but with untrammeled freedom of thought and of life.

Keats cared for none of these things: he was in love with beauty. One must go back to Spenser to find an Englishman of his sensitiveness to beauty, and he was much simpler than Spenser, whose moral idealism expressed itself in a refined symbolism. Keats was the son of a stable keeper, went to school for a few years, and was conspicuous chiefly for his pugnacious disposition. The impression that he was a weak, sentimental boy and man is without foundation. He became the victim of a heart-breaking disease; but his was essentially a brave and manly nature.

His later work is notable not only for its beauty, but for its solidity of texture. He became an apprentice to a surgeon. Through his acquaintance with a family of cultivated people he became a reader of good books, and discovered his vocation when he opened the "Faerie Queene." That poem did not make him a poet: it opened his eyes to the fact that he was a poet. "Endymion," published when he was twenty-three years old, was immature in construction and diction; but it was the first bloom of a beautiful genius. "Hyperion," which came near the end, is a fragment, for he was still very young in knowledge of life and the practice of art; but it has nobility and a certain largeness of handling that predict strength as well as art. The first line of "Endymion" showed where he stood as a poet, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," and on his deathbed he said, "I have loved the principle of beauty in all things." He not only loved it, but gave it illustration in short poems of unsurpassed perfection. "The Eve of St. Agnes," the "Ode to a Nightingale," the "Ode to Autumn," the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," have a deathless loveliness and are stamped by that finality of shape which marks the best pieces of Greek sculpture. Matthew Arnold said of these shorter poems that they had "that rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness of which Shakespeare is the great master."

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

While these poets died before maturity, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning had ample time in which to harvest all the fruits of their genius. Wordsworth's life was in striking contrast to the lives of his brilliant contemporaries. Born before them, he lived twenty-seven years after the oldest of them died. Byron was an extensive traveler, Shelley lived five years in Italy, and Keats' last months were spent in the same country. Byron died in Greece, Shelley was drowned in the Gulf of Spezia , and Keats came to the end of his sufferings in the little room that looks out on the Spanish steps which are gay with flowers in the Roman spring.

With the exception of a brief residence in France and Germany, Wordsworth spent eighty years on English soil, and mainly in the Lake Country. He was born in the North, went to school in a little village near Lake Windermere, and spent his life at Grasmere and at Rydal Mount only three or four miles distant. His life was free from struggles, either mental or material, and was one of meditation and quiet growth. In contrast with Byron, he was a poet of reflection; unlike Shelley, he saw Nature as the intimate companion of the spirit; and he sought beauty in the simplicity of obscure lives and daily experience rather than in the richness of imagination or in that fairy land of mythology which laid its spell on Keats. He was deeply religious, and saw Nature as a revelation of the divine mind; a visible and material creation, penetrated and filled by the divine spirit. His years of inspiration were few; but his conscientious industry was untiring. In his creative moods he wrote some of the noblest and most perfect poetry in English; in his moods of faithful industry he wrote much thoughtful but unpoetic verse. In the latter class fall his long poems; in the former class fall many of his shorter pieces, in which lofty thought and deep feeling are fused in an art of exquisite simplicity and purity. "The Prelude" and "The Excursion" contain passages of great beauty; but they are valuable chiefly to students. In the ten years which followed the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798 he wrote many poems which are for all people and for all time. Such poetry as "Lucy," "To a Highland Girl," "The Solitary Reaper," "To a Cuckoo," "I Wandered Lonely," "She Was a Phantom of Delight," "Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shade," ought to be planted in the minds of children as refuges from the commonplace, and as a protection from all that is cheap and inferior in life and art. In the "Ode to Duty," that on "Intimations of Immortality," in many stanzas from the long poems, and in a group of sonnets, Nature and Life are interpreted in an art which is both commanding and beautiful. At his best, in depth of thought, loyalty to truth, spiritual insight, purity of feeling, and that simplicity which is the last achievement of art, Wordsworth belongs among the half-dozen great poets of England.

It is too soon to assign their permanent places to Tennyson and Browning; but there is little doubt of their survival among the singers whom the world will not forget. Both were fortunately born and well educated, though in different ways; both were happily situated in life; both had ample time in which to give full and rounded expression to their genius. Fame did not come early to either; but it discovered Tennyson in middle life, and for three or four decades it invested him with immense authority. Both were thinkers and students as well as singers, and both had ample intellectual resources. Tennyson was the finer artist; he was, indeed, one of the most perfect artists in the history of poetry. He had command of both harmony and melody; in other words, he could build a poem on strong constructive lines, and he could make it exquisitely musical. He mastered the resources of words; he knew how to use consonants and vowels so as to make his lines sing in the ear; he understood what can be done with assonance , repetition, alliteration. He was an expert workman; but never a mechanic alone. The stream of thought was not locked in poetic forms: it flowed freely through them. His art is so perfect that it conceals itself. He was not only a poet of exquisite skill, but he was a vigorous and independent thinker. The future historian of the intellectual and spiritual history of the nineteenth century will find "In Memoriam" what is called "an original authority" of far greater value than the formal records of the time. Some of the early short poems which captivated young readers in the '30's and '40's of the last century seem somewhat thin and artificial today; but the great mass of Tennyson's poetry has substance as well as quality, and such poems as "Ulysses," "Sir Galahad," the "Two Voices," have a noble reach of thought as well as a compelling music; while the magic which lives in "Break, Break, Break," the songs from "The Princess," "Crossing the Bar," does not lose its spell. In power of thought, in deep religious feeling unbound by dogmatism, in faith in ordered liberty, in love of home, and in passion for beauty, Tennyson is the central figure of the Victorian Age.

Browning is not so broadly representative of the movement of the age. He gave dramatic expression to one aspect of its experience; but that aspect was of thrilling interest. Tennyson did not miss the significance of individual impulse; but he saw men in ordered ranks, in social relations. He felt and expressed the collective experience of his age. Browning felt and expressed the experience of individual souls, of "Paracelsus," "Luria." He is the interpreter of exceptional experiences and natures, of "Abt Vogler," Andrea del Sarto, the Renaissance Bishop.

He knew secrets of great and mean souls, of Pompilia and the Pope, of "Half Rome" and Caponsacchi , in "The Ring and the Book," of "The Patriot," and of the husband of "The Last Duchess." He was a psychologist of penetrating intelligence, and his passion for analysis and dealing with problems sometimes ran away with him, to use a colloquialism; hence the perplexities which beset the student of some of his work and the organization of clubs to interpret him.

Browning was often a very effective artist; but he was often very indifferent to form, and there are long productions of his which are intensely interesting but are not in any proper sense poetry. Time will separate the experiments in psychology from the achievements in art, and there will remain a body of poetry which appeals powerfully to men and women of intellectual interests and habits; a poetry notable for its reading of the secrets of individuality, its splendid optimism based on faith in the individual soul and in the purpose and power behind the universe, in the sense of freedom to take and use life daringly, in the impulse to action and spiritual venture, for its bold imagery and strong phrasing. Such poems as "Prospice," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," are not only impressive poetry, but have the note of the bugle in them.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING.--"Life of Wordsworth," Professor Knight; "Wordsworth," F. W. H. Myers ; "Life of Shelley," Medwin; "Shelley," J. Addington Symonds ; "Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats," Richard Monckton Milnes; "The Works of Lord Byron, with His Letters and Journals and His Life," Thomas Moore ; "The Real Lord Byron," J. C. Jeafferson ; "The Life and Letters of Browning," Mrs. Sutherland Orr; "Browning," G. K. Chesterton ; "Alfred, Lord Tennyson: a Memoir," Hallam, Second Baron Tennyson; "The Life of Lord Tennyson," G. C. Benson.

THE MENTOR

ISSUED SEMI-MONTHLY BY

The Mentor Association, Inc.

Volume 1 Number 44

Some of the numbers of The Mentor have been used as the subject matter for reading clubs. That is a use of The Mentor that we most heartily welcome. We have information from one reader that the number of The Mentor on "Spain and Gibraltar" is to be used at the next meeting of a literary club in the home of the writer. This number is to be read in conjunction with a study of Washington Irving's books on Spain--"The Alhambra" and "The Conquest of Granada." Another club has used the article on "Dutch Masterpieces" as the core of its evening's study, and we have it from a reader that he knows that number of The Mentor "almost by heart." No better thing could be said of The Mentor than that it is worth knowing by heart. It means that The Mentor has become to some readers at least a fund of important information--a fund that they can literally absorb and make their own.

The New York Sun called attention editorially, a short time ago, to the yearly report of Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, in which he deplores "too much slovenly reading matter" as an obstacle to education, "the substitution of quantity for quality," and recalls the fact that the great lawyers of the Colonial period and the makers of the Constitution had few, but the fittest, books; knew well a few first rate books.

"One reason, aside from insufficient or incompetent instruction in the schools, for the so often complained of illiteracy, so to speak, of students, is probably to be found in the mass of stories which the Carnegie and other libraries feed to them, and which they skim through at the double quick, getting no permanent impression. Their great-grandfathers read over and over and assimilated a handful of books. The little dingy or tattered home collection was often their school, college and university.

"Let us read over again Nicolay and Hay's description of Abraham Lincoln's boyhood studies: 'His reading was naturally limited by his opportunities, for books were among the rarest of luxuries in that region and time. But he read everything he could lay his hands upon, and he was certainly fortunate in the few books of which he became the possessor. It would hardly be possible to select a better handful of classics for a youth in his circumstances than the few volumes he turned with a nightly and daily hand--the Bible, "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Pilgrim's Progress," a history of the United States, and Weems' "Life of Washington." These were the best, and these he read over and over till he knew them almost by heart.'"

"Almost by heart!" Fortunate is he who has lived with a few books. In a world of volumes swollen to intolerable dimensions there are still but a few real books. They are those we make our own; that shape the mind, store the memory, are the foundation and discipline of our intellectual life.

The purpose of The Mentor is to give the gist of knowledge to be found in the world's best books, and to give that knowledge in a form that is easy to retain. A number of Mentors thoroughly absorbed--as we might say, "learned by heart"--what a mental equipment it would mean! And the practical side, too, should be considered. Most people haven't time to read even the world's best books. The Mentor can be read in a few minutes.

FAMOUS ENGLISH POETS

LORD BYRON

Monograph Number One in The Mentor Reading Course

"I awoke one morning and found myself famous," said the great poet Byron. This was almost the very truth. A single poem, a long one indeed, "Childe Harold," made him the most talked of man of his time. His fame grew in a night. And yet he is said to have been prouder of being a descendant of those Byrons who came into England with William the Conqueror than of having been the author of "Childe Harold."

The Byrons were an ancient and honorable family, numbering among them many famous soldiers and landowners. George Noel Gordon Byron, the poet, was born on January 22, 1788. His father was Captain John Byron, a profligate and spendthrift. His mother was Catherine Gordon, the second wife of "Mad Jack Byron," as the poet's father was called. His parents soon separated, Mrs. Byron taking her son with her.

In 1798 the poet's great-uncle died, and George became Lord Byron at the age of ten. He and his mother were now assured of a comfortable income, and he was sent to Harrow School, where, in spite of his lameness, which he had suffered from birth, he became a good athlete.

At the age of sixteen Byron fell desperately in love with Mary Chaworth, a distant relative, two years older than himself. Her indifference broke the poet's heart--for the time being.

He entered Cambridge in 1805, and while there wasted most of his time. He left college with the degree of Master of Arts at the age of twenty. In 1807 he published his first volume of poetry, "Hours of Idleness." The Edinburgh Review ridiculed these in a satirical criticism. This provoked from Byron a brilliant retort in the form of a poem called "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."

In 1809 he was off for Europe. In "Childe Harold" he has told his thoughts and experiences during these wanderings. The first two cantos of this poem appeared in 1812, and their success was instantaneous.

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