Καὶ σέ, γέρον, τὸ πρὶν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὄλβιον εἶναι κ the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. Take that incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino's tremendous words: take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil: "Io son fatta da Dio, sua mercè, tale, Nè fiamma d'esto incendio non m'assale . . ."‡ take the simple, but perfect, single line: "In la sua volontade e nostra pace. Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth's expostulation with sleep: "Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio: "If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain Take of Milton that Miltonic passage: "Darken'd So, yet shone Above them all the archangel; but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care Sat on his faded cheek *"Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we hear, happy.' -Iliad, xxiv. 543. "I wailed not, so of stone grew I within; they wailed."-Inferno, xxxiii. 39, 40. "Of such sort hath God, thanked be his mercy, made me, that your misery toucheth me not, neither doth the flame of this fire strike me. Inferno, ii. 91-3. **In His will is our peace."-Paradiso, iii. 85. 20 25 add two such lines as: "And courage never to submit or yield and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proserpine, 5 the loss "which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world." These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our 10 judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious estimates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate. The specimens I have quoted differ widely from one another, but they have in common this: the possession of the very highest poetical quality. If we are thoroughly 15 penetrated by their power, we shall find that we have acquired a sense enabling us, whatever poetry may be laid before us, to feel the degree in which a high poetical quality is present or wanting there. Critics give themselves great labor to draw out what in the abstract consti20 tutes the characters of a high quality of poetry. It is much better simply to have recourse to concrete examples:to take specimens of poetry of the high, the very highest quality, and to say: The characters of a high quality of poetry are what is expressed there. They are far better 25 recognized by being felt in the verse of the master, than by being perused in the prose of the critic. Nevertheless if we are urgently pressed to give some critical account of them, we may safely, perhaps, venture on laying down, not indeed how and why the characters arise, but where 30 and in what they arise. They are in the matter and substance of the poetry, and they are in its manner and style. Both of these, the substance and matter on the one hand, the style and manner on the other, have a mark, an accent, of high beauty, worth, and power. But if we are asked to define this mark and accent in the abstract, our answer must be: No, for we should thereby be darkening the question, not clearing it. The mark and accent are as given by the substance and matter of that poetry, by the style and manner of that poetry, and of all other 5 poetry which is akin to it in quality. Only one thing we may add as to the substance and matter of poetry, guiding ourselves by Aristotle's profound observation that the superiority of poetry over history consists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher 10 seriousness (ψιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον). Let us add, therefore, to what we have said, this: that the substance and matter of the best poetry acquire their special character from possessing, in an eminent degree, truth and seriousness. We may add yet further, what is in itself 15 evident, that to the style and manner of the best poetry their special character, their accent, is given by their diction, and, even yet more, by their movement. And though we distinguish between the two characters, the two accents, of superiority, yet they are nevertheless 20 vitally connected one with the other. The superior character of truth and seriousness, in the matter and substance of the best poetry, is inseparable from the superiority of diction and movement marking its style and manner. The two superiorities are closely related, 25 and are in steadfast proportion one to the other. So far as high poetic truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet's matter and substance, so far also we may be sure, will a high poetic stamp of diction and movement be wanting to his style and manner. In proportion as this high 30 stamp of diction and movement, again, is absent from a poet's style and manner, we shall find, also, that high poetic truth and seriousness are absent from his substance and matter. So stated, these are but dry generalities; their whole force lies in their application. And I could wish every student of poetry to make the application of them for himself. Made by himself, the application would impress 5 itself upon his mind far more deeply than made by me. Neither will my limits allow me to make any full application of the generalities above propounded; but in the hope of bringing out, at any rate, some significance in them, and of establishing an important principle more firmly by their 10 means, I will, in the space which remains to me, follow rapidly from the commencement the course of our English poetry with them in my view. APPRECIATION WALTER PATER* M ANY attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express 15 it in the most general terms, to find a universal formula for it. The value of these attempts has most often been in the suggestive and penetrating things said by the way. Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what 20 is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have. Beauty, like all other qualities represented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and 25 useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty, not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms *The Renaissance, Preface, pp. ix-xiii. possible, to find, not a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of esthetics. "To see the object as in itself it really is," has been 5 justly said to be the aim of all true criticism whatever; and in esthetic criticism the first step toward seeing one's object as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realize it distinctly. The objects with which esthetic criticism deals—music, poetry, 10 artistic and accomplished forms of human life—are indeed receptacles of so many powers or forces: they possess, like the products of nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really 15 produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and if so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its presence, and under its influence? The answers to these questions are the original facts with which the esthetic critic has to do; and, as in the study of light, of 20 morals, of number, one must realize such primary data for oneself, or not at all. And he who experiences these impressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination and analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract question what beauty is in it- 25 self, or what its exact relation to truth or experiencemetaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical questions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or not, of no interest to him. The esthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with 30 which he has to do, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or less peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to |