Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/507

 10 s. XL MAY 22, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

NOTES ON BOOKS, to.

Shelley. By Francis Thompson. With an Intro- duction by the Right Hon. George Wyndham. (Burns & Gates.)

THE history of Francis Thompson's essay on Shelley is by this time famous. It was written twenty years ago ; was sent to The Dublin Review, but was rejected by the editor ; was then thrown aside by the poet, and was only dis- covered after his death by Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, through whose agency it was once more offered to that magazine, where it appeared in the middle of last year. It is now issued in book form, and lovers of fine poetry, fine prose, and fine criticism have one thing more to be thankful for.

Criticism of such high quality as we find in the essay is difficult to criticize, and indeed the truest appreciation of it is to give oneself up unreservedly to its enjoyment. Any cold analysis of its fervencies can hardly fail to seem as inept as the grammarian's mechanical dissection of a poem. Not that it has not a sound and definite basis of strictly critical principles, but the abound- ing and spontaneous sympathy with which it is instinct lifts it above the regions in which the critical faculty is deliberately exercised. It is this which makes it such a vital piece of work, and gives such value to its utterances on the large questions of literature with which it deals. Here, for example, is a pregnant passage in which the writer speaks of contemporary poetry and its principal defect as compared with the poetry of the early nineteenth century :

" That defect is the predominance of art over inspiration, of body over soul. .. .Theoretically, of course, one ought always to try for the best word. But practically, the habit of excessive care in word-selection frequently results in loss of spontaneity ; and, still worse, the habit of always taking the best word too easily becomes the habit of always taking the most ornate word, the word most removed from ordinary speech. In consequence of this, poetic diction has become latterly a kaleidoscope, and one's chief curiosity is as to the precise combinations into which the .pieces will be shifted."

This is as well worthy of being taken to heart now as it was twenty years ago. And again in discussing Shelley's technique, as it appears in the best of the shorter poems and lyrics, the critic has a fine and true generalization to the same effect :

" Remark, as a thing worth remarking, that, although Shelley's diction is at other times singularly rich, it ceases in these poems to be rich or to obtrude itself at all ; it is imperceptible ; his Muse has become a veritable echo, whose body has dissolved from about her voice. . . .A lesson, this, deserving to be conned by a generation so opposite in tendency as our own : a lesson that in poetry, as in the Kingdom of God, we should not take thought too greatly wherewith we shall be clothed, but seek first the spirit, and all these things will be added unto us."

Thompson's interpretation of Shelley himself is exceedingly interesting and suggestive. His childlike quality is noted as the most vital characteristic both of his life and his poetry ;

his singing is " the child's faculty of make-believe raised to the nth power." Thus he was a mytho- logical poet, for " this childlike quality assimilated him to the childlike peoples among whom mytho- logies have their rise " ; and one is tempted to go on quoting indefinitely " the lark that is the gossip of heaven, the winds that pluck the grey from the beards of the billows, the clouds that are snorted from the sea's broad nostril, all the elemental spirits of Nature, take from his verse perpetual incarnation and reincarnation, pass in a thousand glorious transmigrations through the radiant forms of his imagery."

At this point Thompson makes a striking claim for Shelley. " He belongs," he says, " to a school of which not impossibly he may hardly have read a line the Metaphysical School. To a large extent he is what the Metaphysical School should have been." And in a passage which we cannot forbear to transcribe he indicates the source of Shelley's vivifying power over abstrac- tions :

" Any partial explanation will break in our hands before it reaches the root of such a power. The root, we take it, is this. He had an instinctive perception (immense in range and fertility, astonishing for its delicate intuition) of the under- lying analogies, the secret subterranean passages, between matter and soul ; the chromatic scales, whereat we dimly guess, by which the Almighty modulates through all the keys of creation. Because, the more we consider it, the more likely does it appear that Nature is but an imperfect actress, whose constant changes of dress never change her manner and method, who is the same in all her parts."

We have quoted enough to show the quality of this essay, which is itself a splendid artistic achievement. It would be difficult to overpraise it merely as a piece of English prose, with its majestic rhythms and its swelling periods. And any one who is familiar with Francis Thompson's verse will be interested to observe the numerous close parallels, both of thought and phrase, between this prose and several of the poems.

The Cambridge History of English Literature Edited by A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller. Vol. III. Renascence and Reformation. (Cam- bridge, University Press. )

Ix the "Prefatory Note" the editors explain that " the process of compression has had to be applied more severely than we might have wished ; bat, in accordance with the intentions expressed in the preface to Volume I., we have not scrupled to devote less space to well-known writers, in order to treat at greater length subjects concerning which difficulty may be experienced in obtaining assistance elsewhere ; neither have we hesitated to limit the space devoted to generalisation rather than restrict unduly that required for biblio- graphies."

The result of these aims is to make the book of more value for the professional student, and for one who has already some considerable knowledge of letters, than for the ordinary reader. The volume has in some places a congested effect which makes it difficult to read, though we gladly recognize that it is well worth reading, and that several of the writers employed move easily and effectively within the limits assigned to them, and do manage, after all, to give us some general