Poetry and the Reverse. Part V: The Poetaster, the Versifier, the Mediocre Poet, the Minor Poet

Irish Jesuit Province

Poetry and the Reverse. Part V: The Poetaster, the Versifier, the Mediocre Poet, the MinorPoetAuthor(s): George O'NeillSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 43, No. 508 (Oct., 1915), pp. 622-629Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20503793 .

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[ 622 ]

POETRY AND THE REVERSE

By THE REV. GEOiRCE )' NEILL, S.J.

PART V.-THE POETASTER, THE VERSIFIER, THE MEDIOCRE POET, THE MINOR POET

'J T is of great imuportance for the peace of mind of the j civilized world that the distinctions separating these

four classes, the Poetaster, the Versifier, the Mediocre. Poet, anid the Minor Poet, should be accurately apprehended and steadiLly kept in minid. Lauglh niot, good reader: but

remuemiiber how sensitive are poets (real or would-be), how great the responsibilities of their critics, and how readers, poets and critics include nearly all the eivilized world.

W-ith THER POETASTER our last article may be said to have

been concerned. () For it is he who (properly speaklng) provides " The Reverse" of poetry. But we did not come to

close quarters with his personality or psychology. What -marks him out, then, we wQuld niow say, is ncot so much the

weakness of his means, or the insignificanice of his aims, or the faultiness of his execution, or eveni all these together, so

muech as pretence and affectation. He feigns passion where there is no real feeling, imaginative vision where there is only ,echoing of other people's words, inspired utterance where -there is but deliberately-contorted prose. He is cousin to the false prophets of old, who persisted in repeating: " Thus saith the Lord," wlhen the Lord had not spoken. We may sternly rejoice that he has also somnetimes fared like somne of those false prophets. After enjoyinig a greater or less degree of vogue, he has fallen inlto the hands of zealous sons of

Israel, who have kindled a great fire and roasted him with so

mighty a burning that the atoning smell still reeks through the ways of literature. Such was the fate of Robert Mont

1,4 Irish Monthly," September, 1915.



POETTRY A1N7D Tll] E ViFE ]E 623

luomery at the hands of that awxful high-priest Lord i\tacaulay.

There have been othlers, whose obscure names have not

so well suLrvived the holocaust. Shotws anid slamns of the

poetaster im:ipose for a timiie: a hlome is set up as a Shake

speare, a Younig as a _Milton, a Tupper for a Wordsworth,

I dare not comle nearer home; but at last the torch is applied, or perhaps the mere wear and tear of time is sufficient, and

presently the wvhole lath-and-plaster structure goes off in lafientable dust aud ashes. Oecasionally a big destructive

critic, a Macaulay or a Jeffrey, will attempt to kindle an

auto-da-f e with a victinl of real worth: but the flames are apt

to recoil oni the sacrificer, while the child of the gods eludes

their maistakeen zeal, amid, like Shelley's Cloud or Camupbell's

Ihope, soars above his owin pyre alnd laughs at his own

cenotaph. Excellenit poets, however, and eveni great on-es are liable to

dro) for moments to the level of poetastry. An extrenme lapse of good taste, a sinking of the wings of inspiration, ill-fortLune as to subjeet-matter , may cause the fall. We

have already given some illustrations: Shakespeare may supply a few `hore: and they abouLnd luxuriantly in the

pages of the " mietaphysical" poets, who seemned almost to

take pleasure in these wsild plunges into pathos.

THE VERSIFIER is a quite respectable, anid may be a very useful and admnirable person. His merit will depend largely

onl his guarding himself fromn the pretentions alnd affectations

that characterise the poetaster. Hfis note and his function

are to use the fornis of poetry to achieve somle purpose which

is not proper to poetry. He has no vocation to express glorified

passion and transcendant imanginiation : whlat h(e attempts is to

mueet sonie practical need, to pronmote sonice catIse, to chronicle, to narrate, to satirize, to enilighten; anid for this purpose

he uses, as deftly as he may, the meedlium of verse. For

verse (he knows) hits the faney, catches the attention, grips the niiemnory, lingers on the ear. And therefore we find that

nearly all the beginniings of human literature are in verse,

n-ot prose. Lawvs and moral precepts have con-stanitly tended

to this form. The dry' enumerations of tiP schoolmaster

were niore easily swallowed and assimilated, when thus

sugared and caindied. Compliments anid dedications thu%s



624 THE IRISH MONTHLY

snatched a grace beyonid thie reach of prose; satire and epi

gramn armiied themnselves with a slharper stinig. And the

Versifler has often possessed a remnarkable gift- of expression His talents were often so brilliant and vaiied that he could

assume a mnost plausible resemnblance to the genuine Tltes,. seer, or maker. Needless to say, he'was sonetimes muore attractive and popular than the high and genuine artist

The most admirable and unmiixed example of the Versifler I know is J. R. Lowell- -at least in his higher ancd mpore

academic flights. "Academic flights!"--yon will perlhaps, repeat; " surely an ill phrase U' It is an ill )hrase: bitt its

very absurdity helps to hlit of the character of such a piece,

as Lowell's "Ode Recited at the Harvard Coummemoration, 4uly 21, 1865." Take the followNing passage, which I quote'

with all respect Our slender life runs rippling by and glides

Into the silent hollow of the past,

What is there that abides

To make the next age better for the last?

Is earth too poor to give us

Something to live for her that shall outlive us ?

Some more substantial boon

Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle mnoon?>

The little that we see

From doubt is never free,

The little that we do

Is but half-nobly true,

With our laborious hiving

What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,

Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,

Only secure in everyone's conniving,

A long account of nothings paid with loss,

Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,

After our little hour of strut and rave,

With 1ll our pasteboard passions and desires,

Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,

Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.

But stay I No age was e'er degenerate,

Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,

For in our likeness shall we shape our fafe.

It is so good (even apart f roml the value of its sentiments >

yet only an admirable imitation of poetry! It says mu-ckb

and well; it suggests nothing. It is competent, graceful, elevated, but it never grips, nor overpowers, nor even gives.



POETRY ASD THE REVERSE 625

a new life to anl old thouight, mnuch less opens for us any

sudden new window into eternity.

Very different examyples of good verse wvhich is not poetry

may be foulnd everywhere in the Young Irelanid literature.

To this category I would assign the enitire work in verse of

Sir C. G. Duffy and of " Speranza." Their aim-the

,elearly-expressed aim of the ml-odest Davis himself--was.the stirring political appeal, not the poem. Verse was simply a nmediunm judiciously chosen- and effectively used. And, consequently, Callaian'is " Gouganie Barra," though far

from a perfect production, has muore poetry in it than any.

nuimber of, pieces like " The Muster of the North."(21

THE MEDIOCR:E POET has been a noted figure ever since

Horace pilloried himii in the " Ars Poetica"-4hat casual work

which so oddly becamie a canoniical book of criticismn.

Mediocribus esse poetis Non di, non homines, non concessere columnae (8)

There he stands through the ages, ani undignified Prometheus, rejected by gods, scorned of miien, tranisfixed to one of those

pitiless coluimn-is ! What then is this forbidden personage, and how has he deserved his fate?

He miiay be described as a mnild alnd tempered version of the

Poetdster. He is niot ridiculous,, but only weak or dull; he

does not wallow in the absurd, but he hovers only a little over

it. TYn cannot call him frigid; he is onily lukewarm. He

may einrapture somie people of bad taste; i he mnay extort a

sucCes dcesturne fromn sone people of good taste. (HTence we

see Horace's " homines" is not to be taken too sweepingly).

He mnay have conisiderable skill in meakinig smiiall resources go

a lolng way: he muay have so miany notes to Iis instruLment

that he can conceal the poverty of his inivention. He may

have admirable extra-poetic qualities. He miiay possess every

gift that Shelley lacked. But he remiiainis mliediocre because

he lhas niot, or has too stintedly, the thiree gifts that Shelley 2 Of the Young Ireland patriotic verse, apart froim two or three pieces

of Daviq' own and Mangan's "Dark Rosaleen," it seems to ine that

Edward Walsh's "Irish War-Song" is the most authentic poem. There is a ring and a reel in it, a sense of indomnitable marchinlg hosts, a

thrill given to the present from a very remote past, which are quite

outside the powers of a mere versifier

3"Ars Po?tica," 11 372-3



626 THE HIUSH MION THLT

was lord ot,-m-a-iigmation, passion., and thle seeret of verbal

music.

Looking r-ounid foir examples, I fear Lonigfellow is pretty

often a type of the mtiediocre poet-in- his miiore ambitiouw

efforts. Take iiawtatha, for instance,, with its lack of

originality, 4) the tirick anid imlonlotonyA- of its. ietre, the poverty

of its ideas ansd imagery--ail this beneath1 a showo of niovelty

and freshness. Anid it is too ambitious to be saved as genuine

m-ninior" poetrv (of whIiich wl-e shall speak presently). Take,

again, the dlull anid stagey' " Evangellne,'' with its mlock local

colouiring, shipped over front S-weden to Canada, the cheap

appeal of its patlhetic story, its pseutd-classical lang ui mi:etre, its Nordiniess and lenigthiniess-is it not as miiediocre as

a Christm--ias oleograph? Yet LTnngfellow has merits (niot

strietly poetieal) which enttitle himn to very great considera

tion. We slhoul (T l n}t foirget, eveii inj a )uirelv literary study,

his m)ure elevated t-onie, an-id his syimpathetic humiiianiity. He

did an excellenit life-work.: he helped many-v good causes: his

poems were singularly serviceable in kindling or feeding the

love of literatutre in the hearts of the average man, womaan and

clild. 7Their finier ad illoftier sentimients le expressed (especially ill his lyrics) in a varietv of clear anid graceful forms,7 thereby

winning himiiself atnI immllllellse popularity. Would to heaven

that men of greater gifts biad alwayvs done as well, and lbad

never earned a vogutie by more dubious arts!

Felicia Dorothea Browne, w-ho became Mrs. Hemansr,

is, as we have already suggested, a sort of feebler Longfellow-.

and therefore a still clearer tvpe of the m-ediocre poet.

Yet, being less ambitiouis thani he, she too may

occasionally claimii escape i:nto the happier class of the

"minors." (We oveilook her big tragedy, "The Vespers of

Palermo, wlhielh is quiiite intolerable). It is curious hlow

uniformly she r eflects the placid dom-lesticlty of EnglisF i

middle-class andl early Victoriani life; for she was of originl

partly Irish, partly Germiiain, blended with ani Italian strain,

and she lived muinch ii XVales. Yet lher lyrics are (witlh two

or three partial exceptionis) miloniotolious and utidistiniguished,

4 Longfellow tells us solnetlhing of Iiis indebtedness to writers on the

Indians, like Schooleraft He does not tell us of his large debt (inclu

ding his metre) to the Finnislh epic, " The Kalevala."



POEY TRY A.NVD THE REVERSE 6217

while her yoluminous sheaves of mildly-ronantic and senti mental narrative, "Records of Woman" and the like, are truly

mediocre. In all her work, a kind of stock-in-trade of fancy

goods, is carried abouLit all over the earth, and duniiped down

anywhere-in Italy, or Poland, or Patagonia. The identical glades and shades, niountains and fountains, doves and loves, dark-eyed maidens anid dark-browed warriors, who meet amid bowers and 'die among flowers, recur perpetually, with nierely the thinnest veneer of local differentiationi. " If poetry,"'

writes A. Symions, in a penetrating study of this poetess, " were really what many people are quite

satisfied it should be-an idealization of the feelings of an average mind at momnents when the minild is open to every passing iimpression, ready to catch at siinilitudes and call uip associations, but not in the grip of a strong thouight or vital

passion, then the verse of Felicia Heanais would be, as some

people once thought it was, the ideal poetry."(5) Needless to say, if the best are liable to lapses into sheer

poetastry, mluch more are they liable to in-tervals, and even

long intervals, of mediocrity. Indeed, ani intensity and force of inspiration and style which neyer flagged wvould hardly consist with sanity. Naturally, therefore, we find that the intense Shelley, who was never far fron-i insanity, least often

gives the note of mediocrity, while the well-balanced and deliberate Wordsworth most often of great poets does.

Finally, we come to THE 4TINOR PoEr The Minor Poet is

one who has a distinctly smaller and feebler range of gifts

than the great poets, and who essays wvith success humbler

tasks and shorter flights. From this description we may gather at once how he differs from the Versifier and the

Mediocre Poet, with whose being and doing he has sonetimes

been unfairly mixed up. He differs from the Versifier be cause he has the soul of a poet. He differs fromi- the Mediocre

Poet (as well as niore emphatically frome the Poetaster) in his,

niot being pretentious. Henoe he is often (like3 the Versifier) extremely useful and estimable. Indeed certain mellmbers of

his class have been among the chief consolers and teachers of

colmmon humanity. For variotus reasons the great poets are

often -inaccessible to the small htiuman being, to the struggler 6 A Symons UA Triptych of Poets," in The ffew Quarterly.



G28 THE IRISH MI ONTHLY

along life's way, who has little ability for comnprehending the word spoken by the Dante, or the Goethe, or the Milton. :He

-finds themi too far aloof and aloft. Solile of themn, too, will

but ill repay our climnb up to their oracuilar cells, because they use their gifts ill, and the word they utter is niot the word of truth or h-elpfulness. Then coimes along somne hunmble singer,

who can "sweetly soothe and not betray" ; he sounds his gentle

lyric or agreeable tale, and straightway he " holdeth children, fronm play and old nmen from the chimney corner," chases

away gloom and dries up tears. Does he not fulfil Sidney's celebrated characterization of the Poet eveni miore oftei than his illustrious brother? And do6not also the fastidious and the cultured decline upon his pages miluch oftener than they are

ready to confess? But one of them has very agreeably con fessed it, and we mnust quote from his words:

Im our hearts is the Great One of Avon

Engraven,

And we climb the cold suinmits once built on

By Milton,

But at times not the air that is rarest

Is fairest,

And we long in the valley to follow

Apollo. Then we drop from the heights atmospheric

To Herrick Or our cosiest nook in the shade is

Where Praed is,

Or we toss the light bells of the mocker

With Locker,

Or-let us venture to add on our own account

The bard that our fancy just lobs on

Is Dobson.

For undoubtedly Mr. Austin Dobson, the author of these

lines, is a very agreeable specimen of the minor poet.

Longfellow and even Mrs. Hemans-when they are doing the work that really suits themn-scores of Irish lyrists who

have written in English, scores of Germuan lyrists, and others froml- elsewhere, will afford us further and varied illustration of the valuable services that minor poetry can render-of the

virse-mnaking that lightfens the load of life, makes truth agree able and duty acceptable, supplies for the ulspoken jest and the absent friend.



POLETRY JAND THE REVERSE 629

It will be nioticed that the names of certaini writers have

been mentioned in connection xvith two or three of our classes. There is niothinig stran-ge in this, as all our explana

tions niay have helped to show. We miight go further and

show tow it is just conceivable that one and the same person

might, according to his mnoods and manners, figure, not only in two or three, but in all five of our categories! As thus: he

mnight be (1) a Great Poet, by virtue of an unquestioned

masterpiece or two, (2) a Poetaster, in some lamtentable lapse hr lapses froml power anid taste, (3) a Versifier, in his " pot

boilers," his Court odes, or his party-pamnphlets, (4) a Mediocre Poet, in somue ambitio-us seni-failures, (5) a Minor

'Poet, in soie stage of his career, perhaps the earliest or the

latest, wheni he essayed only small poetic tasks and succeeded in themn perfectly. This (I say) is a colnceivable full account of a poet's career; and the notion of its possibility might warn

us against hasty and rash sunmmings-up of inen's work as

being all this or all that. As a rule, however, things will

be simpler: the great man will not often forget himself, the smaall manl wil cliing to his mnodest condition, the humbug will

write-humbug! The fourfold classification that we have sketched out in this

paper will be still more useful should it help to restrain from hasty bracketings-together of Writers and work that really belong to d#lerent categories. I also hope it will give en

couragement to sty talent which fears to venture out because it is not a supreme 'and big talent. I have tried to stow

how respectable and how useful miinor poetic powers may be in their emnployment, if they are wisely exercised and kept free from the taint of falsetto and insincerity. Be yourself, I would, in conclusion, say to every young writer of prose or verse who has followed these remarks; but study to develop your selfhood in the best and fullest way. Put before you,

in every senise, St. Paul's great precept: " Be zealous for the

better gifts." Yet do n1ot forget La Fonitaine's little mnaxim

of good sense:

Ne forcons point notre talent,

Nous ne ferions rien avec grAce.

VonL xL11I.-No. .508 47



Documents

Poetry and the Reverse. Part V: The Poetaster, the Versifier, the Mediocre Poet, the Minor Poet