But, in truth, there is another distinction to be made. Even at their best, Mr. Edgar Wallace’s stories are generally not detective stories, but adventure stories. The two are too much confused under the loose title of shockers or sensational novels; and the writers are often confused themselves about which of the two they are writing. But the sort of story that can be turned out in such numbers is normally the story of varied adventure; as it was turned out by Dumas, or, for that matter, by Henty. It is not so very difficult to plan out, two or three times a week, a sort of obstacle race of man-traps and ambushes, so that a hero shall be in perpetual peril. Thank the Lord it is so easy to write and so easy to read; it is no disgrace to be classed with Dumas and thanked for fertility like his. But to make one man-trap that shall be inspected by experts through the length of a book, and never found to be a man-trap at all, that is work for a different sort of man; and even Trent called it his Last Case and has refused to try again.

  VII. On the New Poetry

  IT is fashionable now to slate poets for being poetical. The most crushing ease against them is when they can be convicted of being musical. Mr. Walter de la Mare is caught tripping on the light fantastic toe to a tune that was alleged to be brazenly melodious and pleasing; and Mr. Humbert Wolfe is arrested in the very act of uttering harmonies in the old, vulgar fashion of Milton and Keats. Crimes of this sort our critics seem more and more bent on bringing to light; but the code of law which they administer is still in the making and appears some times to be a little vague. It is not easy for the outsider to understand why words that might be inspiring and imaginative if only they were cacophonous and clumsy can become less intelligent or suggestive merely by being sonorous or sweet. But there seems really to be an idea, in some of the critics, that the poet should avoid pleasing the ear, quite apart from his primary duty to please the mind. It seems to be akin to the idea of the Imagists, those singular idolaters, and to suggest that the worshipper must have the image but not the hymn of praise — the sound of sackbut, dulcimer, and all kinds of music before the image that the King has set up. In plain words, imaginative poetry must not appeal to the sense of sound. The futurist poet is like the Early Victorian child. He must be seen and not heard.

  I have, indeed, heard of one modern critic who went even further. He is reported as having said:

  ‘True poetry should be invisible and inaudible.’ Presumably it will appeal to the sense of smell. In one sense, doubtless, we may recognize considerable truth in all this, as a description of contemporary conditions. Most of us have read rich passages of modern poetry in which the melody was quite inaudible and the vision was quite invisible. To us, unfortunately, it was also true that the poetry was quite invisible. But that is a matter of personal impression, and we cannot argue with the critic about it with any logical profit. It may be that for him the real melody of the real melodists is inaudible; and that is why he cannot appreciate people like Mr. Walter de la Mare. But it is no good for the writer and the critic to engage in a slanging match to prove which of them is deaf; which can only, at best, prove that neither of them is dumb. The only course, as in every quarrel, is to go back to first principles.

  I do not know how the thing might be settled if it were left as a mere dispute about tastes. I do not know if the poets would give the lie to the critics and hotly deny that they had ever been guilty of making agreeable noises. I know not if Mr. de la Mare will furiously deny that he has an ear; or Mr. Wolfe seek, by emitting hideous sounds, to claim a stainless reputation for discord. Personally, as a mere matter of taste, I prefer them as they are. But the only possible way of debating these things in public is to ask for fundamental or first principles. If there are such principles, it is best to debate on the basis of them. If there are no such principles, it is best not to debate at all. In that case, indeed, we cannot debate at all. We can only go on making noises — if we are common and vulgar persons, tolerable or pleasing noises; if we are fastidious and futuristic persons, ugly or even unbearable noises.

  The arts and crafts of man, from the beginning, have been arts and crafts of combination. They did unite the shelter of the roof and the dignity of the tower. They did unite the style of the orator with the decisions of the Forum. And they did unite the meaning of the words with the music of the tune. Now just as the whole of human culture has been combination, so the whole of the new notion of culture is separation. It really would, if it were logical, break up all these old combinations, not only in literature or even in music, but in architecture, rhetoric, and all the rest. These theorists have a much larger task than they imagine, if they are to put their own theory into practice; but that is to suppose that the theorists know what their own theory is. Thus they would really have to build a solitary tower, all alone by itself in a field, solely in order to be well proportioned and pure in outline, and serving no other purpose at all. Meanwhile, the poor progressives would have to live somewhere and huddle under some roof or other, unless they had abolished roofs by that time. Perhaps the poor devils would be driven into some hideous steel house with electric fittings — which is a more horrid fate than the harshest traditionalist could wish to bring upon them. Perhaps they will only have to live in huge fiats, like coral insects in a coral reef, only not so beautiful.

  But anyhow, the point is that, on this theory, their practical dwelling-place must not be beautiful. It is as obvious and inevitable as that their solitary tower must not be useful. It is part of the implied principle that it must not be a belfry or a beacon, even if it is in the same degree a beautiful belfry or a beautiful beacon. Art must be separated from architecture, or, if the version be more correct, architecture must be separated from building.

  Now, I cannot for the life of me see why architecture should be separated from building; and in the same way I cannot see why sense should be separated from sound. I am quite willing to admit that they are two things; but I say they are two things that not only complete each other, but express and exhibit each other; two things that have the power to bring each other out and emphasize each other’s existence. When I see a beautiful belfry, I know that it is possible to have the beauty without the belfry, and the belfry without the beauty. But I am also quite certain that the fact of its being a belfry makes it more beautiful, and the fact of its being beautiful makes it more of a belfry.

  So, with the great lines of poetry, it would, of course, be possible to have equally melodious sounds that were mere gibberish; and it would, of course, be possible to express the same thought in words that were mere doggerel. But, though it is in this sense a combination, it is emphatically not in any sense an artificial or accidental combination. The verse sounds all the better for meaning something, and the words mean all the more for sounding well. As I have said, the two things bring each other out, as certain condiments are said to bring out certain flavours. And until that psychological fact is realized the separatist school will not have faced the real fact in the tradition. Milton’s ‘Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved’ actually would not sound so well if Teneriffe were only the name of a house in Golder’s Green, or Atlas were spelt with a small ‘a’. And it certainly would not mean so much if it did not sound so well. In short, the union of sound and sense is a Marriage; and this is the age of Divorce. It cannot understand that divine paradox whereby two things become one and yet remain two; or the notion of their increasing each other’s effect by something that is much more subtle than simple addition. The world has become a sort of wild divorce court, not only for individuals, but also for ideas. And even those whose beliefs or unbeliefs make them indifferent to the idea that those whom God hath joined become one flesh may be willing to consider the thesis that the thoughts which man has joined can become one fact.

  For a second aspect of the new poetry, the debate about new forms in art interests me, because my reaction to it is not that of the ordinary reactionary. The first fact I feel is that all this faith in novelty is the very reverse of novel. It is also the very reverse of original. It has now been a convention for more than a century and a half; and it was originally borrowed from the stale and vulgar world of party politics. It is from the old wrangles of Rads and Reformers and True Blue Tories that modern art has borrowed this queer notion of incessant Progress and each generation crowing over the last. When I read all this confident exposition about new methods that must now supersede old methods; of how Yeats and Swinburne must yield to Mr. Eliot and Mr. Pound, just as Tennyson and Browning had to yield to Yeats and Swinburne, I heave a sigh that is full of old and tender memories. I do not feel as if I were reading some revolutionary proclamation of new anarchic hopes or ideals; I feel as if I were reading Macaulay’s Essays. I read Macaulay when I was a boy and believed him, because I was a boy. I might almost say because he was a boy. For the best and heartiest thing about Macaulay was that he lived and died a boy; full of conviction, ignorant of life; cocksure and confident of the future. And in Macaulay’s Essays will be found all that theory of the succession of things more and more ‘advanced’ which the artistic schools still repeat, still scornfully hurl against each other, and still meekly inherit from each other. Progress, said Macaulay, never stops. ‘What was its goal yesterday will be its starting-point to-morrow.’ I believed that simple theory when I was a boy. But I am rather surprised, by this time, that the boys have not found a new one.

  Anyhow, I have now come to believe in a totally different theory about novelty, and even the necessity of novelty. What puzzles me about current culture is that it ignores the very truths which it exaggerates. It is always talking our heads off about Psychology, and then it entirely leaves out the most elementary and familiar facts of psychology, such as the fact of fatigue. It is always raving about Relativity, and then ignores the obvious fact that fatigue is relative. If a man is made to walk twenty miles between two stone walls engraved on each side with endless repetitions of the Elgin Marbles, it is not unlikely that by the end of his walk he will be a little weary of that classical style of ornament. But that is because the man is tired; not because the style is tiresome. The matter might be immediately tested by starting a fresh and enthusiastic man from the other end; a man in the mood of the early Renaissance, eager for the Greek spirit but still ill-acquainted with it. In this sense and for this reason, it is necessary to have novelty; but the novelty is not necessarily improvement. It does not necessarily give the man for whom the old things are stale any right to scorn the man for whom the old things are fresh. And there always are men for whom the old things are fresh. Such men, so far from being behind the times, are altogether above the times. They are too individual and original to be affected by the trivial changes of time. A man who really wants to write a sonnet, as Shakespeare wanted to write a sonnet, is still as spontaneous as a man who wants to sing a song. There are sonnets by Mr. Baring or Mr. Belloc that are exactly of that sort; and, so far from being staler than others, they are fresher than others, because their Renaissance joy in the classical has not gone stale. But that does not mean that everybody must go on writing sonnets, and nothing but sonnets, for ever; for everybody would not want to; and enforced repetitions would really be stale. In other words, it is sometimes hygienic to have a change, even when it is not an improvement. We may leave an old field fallow — not because it will never bear crops again, but because it will; not because it is barren, but because it is not. We may turn away for a time from a good thing — not because it is not good, but because we have, for a purely relative reason, really had too much of a good thing. That is the real reason of the continual stir and change in styles and methods; and it is (within reason) a complete justification of it. Boys will be boys; but they will not necessarily be better men.

  There are at least two things to be said for this theory of change, as an alternative to the rather antiquated theory of progress. First, it does at any rate correspond to the real facts of artistic and literary history, repeated again and again. We do not see in the past a perpetual line of increasing liberation or enlargement of artistic experiment. What we see in the past is the much more human business of men first doing something badly; then doing it well; then doing it too well — or, at least, too easily and too often. Then they commonly begin to do something else; but the thing is much more often an old thing than a new thing. What we really see is the perpetual revival of what are called new things, because they are neglected things. So Raphael and the Renaissance went back to what was older than medievalism; so the Pre-Raphaelites went back to what was older than Raphael. So many modern artists have gone back to Egyptian art because it was older than Greek art. So many of them have gone back to savage art because it was supposed to be primitive and unspoilt. They have a right to seek stimulation, though stimulants should be taken in moderation. But their renewal is relative. The other point in its favour is that it gets rid of a certain element called pride or impudence; which is an east wind blowing out of dry deserts and never did good to man or beast.

  For a third aspect of the new poetry, it is contended that the poet must seek to isolate an image, and even a word. He must, to use the military phrase, cut all connexions and leave it in the air. To begin with, this interests me in the most superficial sense, because what strikes me about poets is that they were all hopelessly traditional, even when they tried to be revolutionary. Nobody could be more entirely in the air, to all appearance, than Shelley. Nothing could be more entirely in the air than his little pet, the Skylark. And no mind could be more filled with the conviction that it was completely in revolt against all tradition, and especially against all religion. And yet it would be quite an amusing exercise to take Shelley’s poem about the skylark, line by line and verse by verse, and show how entirely dependent it is upon traditional ideas, and even rather specially upon religious ideas. Here, perhaps, it would be rather too long an exercise to work my way through that rather long poem. But it is really true that it could be analysed, point by point, in that traditional sense. The song of the radiant young Atheist would probably turn out in the end to be a most orthodox theological tract. He begins by saying, ‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit.’ What does he mean by talking about spirits, if he is not in any sense a spiritualist? What would be the meaning of the remark, if he were really a materialist? He would never have had even the idea of a spirit but for the religious tradition represented in the idea of the Holy Spirit. He then says, ‘Bird thou never wert,’ which is obviously a lie. But it is a lie symbolizing a truth, and what he really means by it may be stated thus ‘I refuse to believe that a bird is only a bird, or that there is nothing more in such things than the material facts that we know about them.’ That thought is the beginning of all theology.

  Shelley’s next surrender to superstition is absolutely abject and appalling. He says, ‘From heaven, or near it’ — a remark which must make all modern and rational persons with one concerted movement cover their faces in shame. In plain words, he not only talks as if there were something divine in the mere empty space above our planet. He actually talks as if there were a paradise of saints and angels some where located, like a coloured cloud, in that space, so that a skylark could be said to be more or less near to it. The lapse is so distressing that I will not linger upon the minor barbarism of medieval physiology, by which the emotions of the bird are represented as coming from its ‘heart’, as if that organ were a centre of consciousness. I was going to say that I ‘had not the heart’ to dwell any longer on the depressing orthodoxy of Shelley, whereby I should myself have fallen into the physical image that is so superstitious and medieval. It is so very difficult to write any intelligible English without being superstitious and medieval.

  Needless to say, the criticism could not only be continued through the whole poem, but it becomes conspicuously clear and true in the most poetical parts of the poem. Certainly the finest passages, and per haps the most frequently quoted passages, are those that really celebrate what is not only a Christian dogma, but one now often abandoned as an antiquated and benighted dogma. Those great movements of verse do not really correspond to the Rise of the Skylark, but rather to the Fall of Man. I dare say Shelley would have been very much surprised if he had been told that he was subscribing to the doctrine of the Fall of Man. But he certainly was; and that was why his words at that moment really become weighty and human. ‘We look before and after and pine for what is not’ has the sound of a great tolling bell. Nobody needs to be told that some spiritual tragedy has already happened to the race of him who cries aloud:

  ‘But if we could scorn

  Hate and pride and fear;

  If we were things born

  Not to shed a tear—’

  or to the poet who can compare such a tragedy with the more trivial bliss of a little feathered creature in the empty air.

  I have already remarked that in the past all the poetry that professed to be particularly revolutionary was in fact particularly traditional. In this and in many things most of the revolutions of the past were pretty much alike; and there are some of us who rather doubt whether the revolutions of the future will be particularly different. But even if we ignore this tradition of traditionalism, and suppose that the futurists have really something novel in the way of a novelty, the logical difficulty of their position still remains. We may, for the sake of argument, treat this change as if there had been no other changes. We may isolate the Imagist as he would isolate the image. We may treat the art as if it had no history, just as the artist tells a story as if it had no beginning. But the fact still remains that, since he has to use the words of some language, he has got the words from somewhere and learned them from somebody. And the words are in fact winged or weighted with the thoughts and associations of a thousand years. If they were not, he would not use them; he might just as well say ‘Grunk’, or ‘Quoggle’.