BOOKS.

THREE CRITICS.*

A BETTER little book of " aesthetics for beginners " could hardly be imagined than Mr. Clutton-Brook's Essays on Art.1

" The Artist and his Audience," " The Pompadour in Art," and " Wilfulness and Wisdom " are all admirable. Perhaps best of all the essays is, however, the first, called " The Adoration of the Magi." In this Mr. Clutton-Brock defines the distinction between the beauty of Nature and the beauty of Art. The beauty of Nature is, he says, the beauty of finish and achievement. Nature says exactly and completely all that she has to say. The beauty of Art is the effort to do something beyond the power of the medium, to accomplish the impossible. Whenever that effort ceases, whenever the artist sets himself a task that he can accomplish, a task of mere skill, then he ceases to be an artist. The painter or the poet who dreads a confession of failure above all things will be dull :—

" Men must free themselves from the contempt of effort and the desire to conceal it, they must be content with the perpetual passionate failure of art, before they can see its beauty or demand that beauty from the artist. Man, if he tries to be a god in his art, makes a fool of himself. In art there is a humility not only of conception, but also of execution which is mere failure and ugliness to those who expect to find in art the beauty and finish of nature, who expect it to be born not made. They are always disappointed by the greatest works of art, by their inadequacy and strain and labour. They look for a proof of what man can do and find a confession of what he cannot do ; but that con- fession, made sincerely and passionately, is beauty. . . . There is a serenity in the beauty of art, but it is the serenity of self-surrender, not of self-satisfaction, of the saint, not of the lady of fashion."

In another essay Mr. Clutton-Brook remarks with great truth how unfortunate it is that the function of the critic should be so often identified with that of the judge. The critic, he /aye, should be the interpreter. He must have a trained and sensitive mind on which the work of the artist will produce as clear and sharp an impression as possible.

In his Interpretation of Keats' Endymion I Professor Clement Notcutt, of Stellenbosch University, fulfils this function ideally,

for his book is a kind of stereoscope through which the beautiful and rocky landscape of " Endymion " may be seen to extra- ordinary advantage. Most lovers of Keats probably read Endymion " without seeking for very much beyond the exquisite form, and for the atmosphere of glamour and romance in which it is rivalled by no other poem in the language. If it were the merest nonsense, it might still be read for the 'magical

• (1) Essays on Art. By A. Glutton-Brock. London : Methuen. 15s l.)—(2) An Interpretation of Kate' Endymion. By II. Clement Notcutt. Co ps Town : South African Electric Printing Co.—(3) Some Soldier Pads. .1.13 St urge Moore. Loudon Grant Richards. 17a. 0d. nat.]

beauty of the words themselves. It has, however, always been vaguely known that, in the words of Sir Sidney Colvin, the poem was intended to " set forth the craving of the poet for full communion with the essential spirit of beauty in the world, and the discipline by which he is led, through the exercise of the active human sympathies and the toilsome acquisition of knowledge, to the prosperous and beatific achievement of his quest." Professor Notcutt has taken us much further, and in his exceedingly readable and scholarly book leads us step by step through what he satisfactorily proves to be one of the most complicated and ambitious of allegories. He does not claim that Keats always worked out his images satis- factorily, but he shows us a colossal piece of work. The scene in the forest at the altar of Pan with which the epic opens stands, he says, " for the fresh interest in, and the love of, Nature which were rapidly becoming diffused at the time of the poetic revival." Endymion is partly Keats himself and partly the poet personified. Visions of an unearthly beauty are suddenly vouchsafed to the shepherd :-

" The story of the threefold revelation that was granted to Endymion is skilfully worked out. It represents the growth in a man's mind of the consciousness that he is called to be a poet. He may arrive at the consciousness in various treys, but Keats represents it here as coming to him first of all on a few definite occasions."

It will be noticed, Professor Notcutt continues, that stress is laid on the fact that when the new revelation came to Endymion he was in a part of the forest that he often visited. The magic bed of flowers blooms suddenly in a place where he was accustomed to sit and watch the light of the sunset :-

" For it was on ground long familiar to him, in poems that he had known from childhood, that there came to Keats suddenly and unexpectedly a vision of the indescribable beauty that inspires all really great poetry. It is not an uncommon experi- ence. Many of us have learned in childhood poems that have given us some degree of pleasure at the time, and in later years we have one day found in them a charm of form and meaning that we had never realized before. There is granted to us a glimpse of the beauty of poetry in itself, and we share in some small degree in the experience of Keats."

On the occasion of the third divine visitation the goddess comes to Endymion in a strange glade of the forest, a place to which he had never before wandered. This Professor Notcutt thinks represents the fact that, afire with the beauty that he had suddenly perceived in familiar poetry, Keats had begun to read the translations of classics which were to colour his genius so powerfully :-

" On each occasion Endymion was wandering quite alone when the revelation came to him, and this suggests one aspect of the experience through which the poet must pass. The inspirations that come to him, the visions of beauty that he sees, are intensely personal and individual experiences. Even if his days should be spent in a crowded city, m his poetic life no one can go with him ; he may tell the story of it to others, but they can never share it ; the vision is for him alone."

We are shown how well the progressive character of these experiences is worked out. The exquisite episode that begins-

" At last with sudden step, he came upon A chamber, myrtle wall d, embower'd high "- and describes how Adonis lies sleeping under a drapery " gold tinted like the peach," guarded by serene Cupids-

" One kneeling to a lyre touched the strings, Muffling to death the pathos with his wings "- ends with the wonderful rush of the descent of Venus's chariot. Here is the coming to life for Keats of the legends of

antiquity, the quickening of Virgil and Ovid :-

" Keats is still trying by means of images to symbolize the abstractions working in his mind,' but the meaning of the images here is not obscure. He is telling us how, after he had first recognized that there was something more in these old legends than the dead perfection of an obsolete poetry, one of them at least blossomed out richly and filled him with delight."

In the long episode of Glaucus and Scylla, which includes the account of Circe and the truly appalling scene in the wood when the " haggard witch " torments the creatures that are her servants, Professor Notcutt finds a. retelling of the whole story, but this time as it affects a different poetic spirit in an earlier age. Glaucus is the poet who yields to the world.

" such a movement, for example, was that which had for its aim the attainment of correctness of style and polish of form in the days of Waller and his contemporaries." Circe is the Restoration, the licentious drama. of Dryden, the " Duna:4" even the " Moral Essays," for, ais Sir Sidney Colvin says,

Keats hated the whole Augustan and post-Augustan trib a of social and moral essayists in verse.

The Indian maiden, who bits probably troubled the most uncritical lovers of " Endymion," even those who read it most entirely for the enamelling of its words, is the human sufferer, the earthly love, the duty indeed which, as Endymion thinks, is in conflict with his worship of Diana, who is the aesthetic ideal. She is forlorn, she is innocent ; he could banish her sorrow. But at what a price l For he still loves his divine, elusive mistress. "To Endymion it seems at the moment that he cannot but yield to the cry for sympathy and help, sacrificing all his former hopes and ideals, though such a sacrifice must bring death as a consequence." The denalmen4 comes when he learns to his joy " that the goddess whom he has so long pursued, but has never fully known, and the Indian maiden who has called out for his passionate love, are not rivals for his love, but are different aspects of the sidle being, whom he now knows in truth and to whom he will henceforth be joined in deathless delight." There is no conflict. He can best serve humanity by his allegiance to the ethereal beauty which has been revealed to him. If this reading be the true one, then the climax over which most of us have boggled is entirely justified :— " The poet comes to realize that his longing aspirations after beauty and perfection in his poetry and his passionate desire to serve his fellow-creatures are not conflicting ideals, but are one and the same ; that for him to use faithfully and earnestly his poetic gift is to render the highest service to mankind ; then he has become a true poet."

Professor Notoutt's remarkable book has rendered a real service to all lovers of " Endymion "—that is, to all lovers of English poetry. It will be a fascinating task to see whether any more of the poem can be unravelled by the light of this new lantern.

Unlike Professor Notcutt, Mr. Sturge Moore is as much noncemed to adjudicate and to admonish as he is to interpret.

'This is as it should be, for Some Soldier Poeta3 concerns itself

for the most part with the work of living men, all of whom will, it is to be hoped, read what their critics have to say, and profit by any sound advice that is given. It would have been unfriendly in Mr. Sturge Moore to adopt Professor Notoutt's attitude, and he is above all a helpful and constructive critic.

The reader has the impression that he is continually trying to go behind his poets and give -them a shove wherever they appear to have stuck. He is a coach rather than a judge, and this is partly what will make his book so agreeable to the general reader, for, owing to his desire to help, his approval is never insipid nor his blame cantankerous. He is also a master of the comparative method. His comparison of two poems, one by F. W. Harvey and another by Fleoker, both of which deal with the poet's desire to immortalize some exquisite moment of human beauty, is extremely successful.

In a chapter upon Richard Aldington Mr. Sturge Moore sets forth the creed of the " Imagists " with great clarity,

and we must note that he is always very sound about quoting at length the poems which he expounds. For example, he includes the whole of Aldington's " The Fawn Sees Snow for the First Time "—that most delightful piece of classicism a to Blatt.

With Julian Grenfell's " Into Battle " most readers will probably feel that he is not quite so successful, as he explains at great length several points which the poem itself makes quite clear. Neither has he very much that is illuminating to say about Rupert Brooke. Perhaps in both cases he has failed because he is conscious that his praise or blame cannot come to the ears of the poet, and, deprived of the hope of furthering and helping, his insight flags.

It is a little difficult to understand what Mr. Sturge Moore sees in Allan Seeger, at any rate in the poems which he has quoted

" I dug about the place he fell And found, no Ligger than my thumb, A fragment of the splintered shell

In warm aluminium."

In the last essay in the book Mr. Sturge Moore attempts to help, not the writer of poetry, but his audience. With a, great deal of this essay the present writer disagrees intensely. For example Mr. Sturge Moore says that the best poetry usually passes unobserved, and sets up as the goal that the critic should become more and more difficult to please. Fortunately Mr. Sturge Moore's practice is far removed from this last stultifying Ideal. But he has one very valuable remark to make. He has

been dealing with two poems, one by Wordsworth and one by Browning:— "It would have been much better if Wordsworth had pub- lished his two stanzas and Browning his two, and omitted the rest of their poem. Why did they not ? Because . . . in the words of Emerson, Great design belongs to a poem and is better than any skill of execution. . . . We went design, and do not forgive the bards if they have only the art of enamel- ling. We want an architect and they bring us an upholsterer.' It is this demand that makes the poet shy of proffering his fragment of pure gold, and eggs him on to work it into a statue by adding clay, iron, or anything else which he has handy."

There are many people who believe that the beat purely literary work of the moment is being done in verse, but who are somehow unable quite to get into touch with, or to enjoy, the Georgians. If they feel baulked and annoyed because of the delights which they realize they are missing, and if they are not above being taught, they should read Mr. Sturge Moore's book, for it will almost certainly show them the way into the new garden of delight.