Comprehensive or Individual
SINCE these volumes run to over a thousand pages it would have been a feat of heroic perversity to prevent their containing a considerable body of excellent poetry. They do. A work of this character, whoever produces it, will be judged not primarily as a product of the compiler's taste, but as an attempt to provide 'a comprehensive survey of English poetry.' A critical history of the sub- ject lies concealed behind its choice, its omissions, its allocation of space, and this is true whether or not such decisions are taken with due delibera- tion. It is therefore legitimate for a reviewer to offer some dry statistics. In this anthology Shake- speare has sixty pages, Milton twenty-eight, Pope twenty-five, Donne, Chaucer and Shelley twenty- four, Wordsworth and Keats eighteen, Spenser seventeen, Byron eleven, Browning three, Burns and Barnes two and a half, Arnold one. Hodgson has six, and David Jones sixteen. Quarles, Cotton, Browne, Swift, Praed and Clough (a random list) have none. Gertrude Stein and a number of liv- ing poets, no need to name them, are present nevertheless. As to the use made of the space allowed, the Faerie Queene occupies one page of Spenser's ration, Paradise Lost six of Milton's (nothing later than the opening of Book iii); Dryden's pages include the whole of the Killi- grew and St. Cecilia Odes; more than half of Byron's are.tlevoted to English Bards and Scots Reviewers, so that Dan Juan is not represented, nor Beppo.
The provision of separate prefaces for some poets seems to be another way of indicating which are the major ones, though this is not certain; Stein, W. H. Davies and Drayton are honoured, but Jonson and Marvell (for instance) are not.
Chapman has a preface, though the compiler seems not to know or care much about him. What we miss when no preface is provided is for the most part 'technical' comment, like this on Mar- lowe's vowels: 'the splendour of . . . "Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars" [is] brought about, so far as technique is concerned, by the bright c and b, by the t of "starres," by the poignant vowels of "beauty" and the brightening vowel sound of the ou in "thousand." ' Occasionally a more general opinion is ventured, as when Chaucer, 'the gentle giant,' is said to know 'nothing of the black powers that rule the world.' This remark might have looked stranger if the Pardoner's Tale had been preferred to the Nun's Priest's Tale. A certain obscurity is introduced into these prefaces by the frequent use of extremely oblique critical comment; one says a wise thing about X by reporting what Y said of Z. For example: what Jonson says of Virgil 'might be said of Chapman, although I imagine he bears no other resemblance to Virgil.' The Shakespeare preface is somewhat bafflingly rapturous, and it includes remarks made by Arthur Symons of Manet, by Wagner of Wagner, by John Ray of butterflies, by Fuseli of Michelangelo, and by Coleridge of Shakespeare.
English poetry is held, refreshingly, to begin with the medieval lyrics, but American poetry with Emerson, a view not shared in New England. Where, for the moment, each ends is suggested by the fact that the most recent English poet in- cluded is Sidney Keyes, the youngest American Robert Lowell. As a 'comprehensive survey' this is not a satisfactory book, though the other claim made for it, that it is 'the most individual antho- logy ever compiled' may have more chance of success. It is required reading for everybody who is writing an exhaustive study of the compiler.
FRANK KERMODE
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