Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/36

 30 Philosophies of Style We conclude, then, with Horace that the secret of life in poetry lies in the power to give individual form to universal ideas of nature adapted for expression in any of the recognized classes of metrical composition. . . . What is required of the poet above all things is right, conception the res lecta potenter of Horace a happy choice of subject matter which shall at once assimilate readily with the poet's genius, and shall, in Shakespeare's phrase, "show the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." The poet . . . must realize the nature of the subject matter which, in his generation, most needs expression, and know whether it requires to be expressed in the epic, dramatic, lyric, or satiric form. When the subject has been rightly conceived, then, as Horace says, it will instinctively clothe itself in the right form of expres- sion, according to the laws of art. Here we have, stated in the clearest terms, the classical separa- tion of form and matter, in spite of the slight concession in the word "instinctively" of the last sentence. It is impossible to do full justice to Courthope's position in these brief quotations from the two lectures, and the same statement may be made in regard to the quotation from Bradley which I am going to give. In his inaugural lecture on "Poetry for Poetry's Sake" 15 the question of the relation of poetic form and poetic matter is analyzed very thoroughly from a romantic point of view. The following extract sums up his doctrine : Pure poetry is not the decoration of a preconceived and clearly denned matter: it springs from the creative impulse of a vague imaginative mass press- ing for development and definition. If a poet already knew exactly what he meant to say, why should he write the poem? The poem would in fact already be written. For only its completion can reveal, even to him, exactly what he wanted. When he began and while he was at work, he did not possess his mean- ing; it possessed him. It was not a fully formed soul asking for a body; it was an inchoate soul in the inchoate body of perhaps two or three vague ideas and a few scattered phrases. The growing of this body into its full stature and per- fect shape was the same thing as the gradual self-definition of the meaning. And this is the reason why such poems strike us as creations, not manufactures, and have the magical effect which mere definition cannot produce. This is also the reason why, if we insist on asking the meaning of such a poem, we can only be answered, "It means itself." How far this is from Courthope's conception of poetry as the union of the universal and external with the individual is plain. 18 Indeed, if we are to believe Bradley, it would be impossible for the poet to follow Courthope's advice to choose a subject-matter of 18 Oxford Lectures on Poetry, pp. 3 ff. 16 Cf. Courthope, pp. 44 f.