Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/163

Rh suffered. His metrical genius is too specific, too enthralling, to be over-long endured. Thus the distinctive tone, however beautiful, which soonest compels attention, as quickly satiates the public. The subjective poets who restrict their fertility, or who die young, are those whom the world canonizes before their bones are dust.

While, then, a few modern poets, at times as absorbed as Greeks in their work, have Temperament. been strenuously impulsive in temper and in the conduct of life, among them Alfieri, Foscolo, Hugo, Landor, Horne, and various lights of the art-school from Keats onward,—the artist's temperament usually in the end determines the order of his product: clearly so in such cases as those of Leopardi, James Thomson, Baudelaire, Poe. Sympathetic examination of the poetry will give you the poet. A fine recent instance of an introspective Arnold's conflict with his genius. nature overcoming the purpose formed by critical judgment was that of Matthew Arnold. A preface to the second edition of his poems avowed and defended his poetic creed. Reflection upon the antique, and the study of Goethe, had convinced him that only objective art is of value, and that the most of that which is infected with modern sentiment is dilettanteism. Art must be preferred to ourselves. Action is the main thing; more than human dramatic greatness alone saves even Shakespeare's dramas from being