Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/269

 III. THEORIES OF POETRY

MONG the various critical essays presented in The Harvard Classics no group is more interesting than that which deals with the theory of poetry. Our consideration of the literary form or quality of the essay has already shown us that we should not expect from the essayist an exhaustive treatise, but rather a free and spirited and suggestive discussion of certain aspects of his subject. To write adequately upon the general theme of poetry, expounding its nature, its æsthetic and social significance, and its technique, would be an enormously difficult task. But there are few poets who have not uttered at one time or another some of the secrets of this craft, or some phase of their admiration for it. Let us glance at the essays of eight English and American poets, ranging in time from the age of Elizabeth to the Victorian epoch: Sidney, Dryden, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Poe, Whitman, and Arnold. Four of this group, Dryden, Coleridge, Poe, and Arnold, are acknowledged adepts in general literary criticism; while Sidney and Shelley, Wordsworth and Whitman, have given expression to some of the most eloquent and revealing things that have ever been written about their own art of poetry.

Sidney's "Defense of Poesy," like Shelley's, is a reply to an attack, but neither poet is very angry, nor does either believe that his opponent has done much harm. Shelley's antagonist was a humorously Philistine essay by his friend Peacock. Sidney is answering somewhat indirectly a fellow Puritan, Gosson, whose "School of Abuse" (1579) had attacked the moral shortcomings of ancient poetry and the license of the contemporary stage. Yet Sidney's "pitiful defense of poor poetry," as he playfully terms his essay, is composed in no