The Flatness of the Augustans
The Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. Chosen by David Nichol Smith. (Oxford University Press. fis. 6d) Poems Written in the Eighteenth Century. Edited by Kathleen W. Campbell. (Blackviell. Be. net.)
IT takes a long time to make the eighteenth century palatable to the post-Romantics. The age was so self-satisfied. Most writers were deeply convinced of their superiority in taste to such rude and beastly ancients as Shakespeare and Chaucer. In fact, this superiority was more than a conviction ; it was a commonplace. Some poets there were who thought wistfully of the energy and rough genius of our ballad literature, the uncultivated and barbaric grandeur of the Elizabethans. But even with these there was a suspicion of patronage. Imitations of Spenser became fashionable ; but nothing is so recognizably Augustan as an Augustan imitation of earlier poetry. Poets could permit themselves, in wild abandonment, to reproduce the incorrect language of their ancestors. The incorrect spirit of their ancestors they could never bring them-
selves to understand or tolerate.
In almost every critic of to-day who has set himself, defin- itely and arduously, to admire the Augustans, we notice a curious half-heartedness. Up to the middle of the century we find survivals of the metaphysical mode and the strong influence of Milton and Dryden. In the second half we can see forecasts of the Romantics and the return to nature. By looking always for survivals and forecasts, it is possible to admire the eighteenth century without noticing its proper and peculiar qualities. And this is perhaps the easiest way for a modern reader to begin to accustom himself to the literature of the period. He can make the first part of his journey through Prior, Matthew Green, John Byrom. These will give him a key to the host of conversational eclogues and " familiar epistles " ; will teach him to appreciate the " un- dress " of the eighteenth century. He can carry through the last part with the guidance of Thomson, Goldsmith, Cowper, Collins, Brhce, Logan, Langhorne, die. The apologetics for the Augustans consist almost entirely in showing that they were not so Augustan as we take them to have been ; if we proceed with this view in mind, we can discover much to delight us. It is easy to love the eighteenth century for everything but itself.
It happens, too, that we shall find a few minor poets who were free from the vices of the period. Wherever a man con- fesses his liking for the poetry of this century, and cites, in his defence, the poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea, of Cuthbert Shaw, or of Mark Akenside, we can swear that he dislikes the whole period profoundly. He has chosen poets who were strangers to their time. Akenside, at his best, is marmoreal : but Augustan poetry is not marmoreal ; it is trivial. He is formal ; but Augustan poetry is not formal ; it is conventional. Really to enter within the skin of the Augustans we must admire their conventions and trivialities. We must re-create in ourselves the urbanity and the immense self-satisfaction which were the atmosphere of their life. We must enjoy them precisely for the qualities they most admired in themselves. It is an enjoyment hard to win, and of no great acuteness when once it is gained.
Even on the least typical poets of the time the curse of flat- ness descended. Anyone who looks for freshness of wording, clear, innocent phraseology, is on a desperate quest. There is the company of Scottish poets. They were a miracle in this drab age ; but their culture was alien, and it would be madness to consider them Augustans. In one other region of letters a lyric simplicity continued. Blake was not without parentage. Here and there among the religious lyrics of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley feeling expressed itself quickly and genuinely in bright, sensational English.
Blake drew metre and mood and language from Isaac Watts ; for Watts was in revolt against himself and his century. He reviled and suppressed his own poetic talents. He conceived that ornament was a sin against true feeling : a great propor- tion of his life he spent in writing deliberately unpoetieg hymns and paraphrases of the Scriptures. Sometimes his heart would burst through into his lines before he had time to repent. The struggle in his nature nukes a hundred oddities crop out in his verse. His very vices are often sou ,Augustan. Fantastic conceits occur that were against the whole temper of the age. In an elegy on the death of a friend, for example, he writes :—
" Our eyes the radiant saint pursue Through liquid telescopes of tears."
This is more after the fashion of Crashaw than of any eighteenth- century model. And where else could be found such clarity as in .4 Sight of Heaven in Sickness ? :— " My cheerful soul now all the day
Sits waiting here and sings ; Looks through the ruins of her clay And practices her wings.
Had but the prison walls been strong And firm without a flaw, In darkness she had dwelt too long, And less of glory saw.
But now the everlasting hills Through every chink appear, And something of the joy she feels While she's a prisoner here.
The shines of heaven rush sweetly in At all the gaping flaws ; Visions of endless bliss are seen ; And native air she draws.
Professor Nichol Smith's anthology is valuable and thor- ough ; it gives a better opportunity for making a survey of eighteenth-century tendencies than any book previously published. It is impossible not to quarrel with anthologists. Neither he nor Miss Campbell has printed the poem of Watts's from which I quote. But there is a great variety of material in the Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse ; and sins of omission are venial. Miss Campbell's book is more modest. She has confined herself to printing poems that are not univer- sally familiar. In her preface she confesses the difficulty that lovers of the Augustan feel in laying open to the public " the privacy and selectness of our trim and formal garden." These two anthologies establish a full right of way.
ALA N PORTER.
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