could be the meaning of this-that he who knew nothing, and knew that he knew nothing, should be declared by the Oracle to be the wisest of men? He resolved to refute the Oracle by finding and producing a wiser; and first on his voyage of discovery he went to the politicians, but he found that these great and eminent men, although thought wise by many, and wiser still by themselves, were not really wise at all. And then he went to the poets, and questioned them upon their art. He tried them all-tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. "But will you believe me, I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves?" And Plato, who makes Socrates say this, was himself a poet; though, to be sure, some aver that only when he had failed in poetry did he take to philosophy, and critical persiflage in prose. But, again, let us recall, also at the outset, a fact which may suggest the other conclusion. I suppose that every one would agree in naming among the best critics of English poetry, Dryden, Coleridge, and Matthew Arnold, and all three were themselves poets. Mr. George Wyndham has named two other pieces as in a class by themselves-Myers' essay on on Virgil, and Francis Thompson's on Shelley-again, each the work of a poet. In some of the instances named, it may be questioned

V THE QUARRELS OF AUTHORS 203 whether the excellence of the criticism was caused by the attainment of the poet, but of Francis Thompson's piece it must be said that it is itself almost a poem. And now, with minds ready for either conclusion, we may start, if the reader will, upon a ramble among the poets to gather such instances as come of what the poets have said about themselves and their fellows.

It is a vast field, and the ramble will be desultory. The hates and loves of the poets as critics fill a large space in their works and records. Mark Pattison said that as civil history is largely a history of wars between states, so "literary history is the record of quarrels in print between jealous authors. Poets and artists, more susceptible than practical men, seem to live a life of perpetual wrangle. . . . These quarrels of authors only show them to be, what we knew, as vain, irritable, and opinionative as other men.' In which respect the literary world closely resembles, if the evidence of Pattison's Memoirs may be trusted, the academical world. But this is only part of the truth. As large a space in the works and sayings of the poets is given to their praises of each other as to their recriminations. In another chapter the charm of the Greek Anthology is discussed, but I have not there noted what is one of its most pleasing features-namely, the epigrams devoted to the praise of the poets. Meleager in

the proem to his "Garland" names many of those whose works he collected, and each mention is made in the form of some appropriate criticism— as in the well-known phrase, "and of Sappho little but all roses. "The whole is done," says Mr. Mackail, "with the light and sure touch of a critic who is himself a poet." The epigrams on many of the poets have a like felicity. Mr. Symonds finds in them "the very quintessence of criticism," and Mr. Mackail, "a real touch of imaginative criticism." The "little but all roses of Sappho has given birth to a volume of poetry exceeding in quantity all that remains of the poetess. Mr. Swinburne, both in verse and in prose, has laid abounding tribute at her feet. "Judging," he says, "even from the mutilated fragments fallen within our reach from the broken altar of her sacrifice of song, I for one have always agreed with all Grecian tradition in thinking Sappho to be beyond all question and comparison the very greatest poet that ever lived. Aeschylus is the greatest poet who ever was also a prophet; Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist who ever was also a poet; but Sappho is simply nothing less as she is certainly nothing more-than the greatest poet who ever was at all." Mr. Wharton, in his charming edition, noted with pleasure that Tennyson "recurred in his latest volume

1

1 From a posthumous essay printed in the Saturday Reviev, February 21, 1914.

A

THE ART OF PRAISE

205

of poems (1887) to a phrase from Sappho which he had used nearly sixty years ago,' "1 and that he "called her the poet, implying her supremacy by the absence of any added epithet." It was, perhaps, as a protest, or a relief from the literary wrangles of Addison's day that he took occasion in The Spectator to call attention to the epigrams in the Greek Anthology upon Euripides, and other of the poets. These epigrams show, he said, that "they who deserve praise have it returned them from different ages: let those which have been laid down show men that envy will not always prevail. And to the end that writers may more successfully enlighten the endeavours of one another, let them consider, in some such manner as I have attempted, what may be the justest spirit and art of praise. It is, indeed, very hard to come up to it. Our praise is trifling when it depends upon fable; it is false when it depends upon wrong qualifications; it means nothing when it is general; it is extremely difficult to hit when we propose to raise characters high, while we keep to them justly." A poet of our own day has said that he has been chided

1 In Locksley Hall Sixty Years After: "Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things." The earlier reference to the same fragment of Sappho (No. 95 in Wharton) was in the piece among the Juvenalia called "Leonine Elegiacs":

The ancient poetess singeth, that Hesperus all things bringeth,
Smoothing the wearied mind.

2 See below, p. 360.

because I have full oft

In singers' selves found me a theme of song,
Holding these also to be very part

Of Nature's greatness, and accounting not
Their descants least heroical of deeds.

In this as in other respects he has trodden in the footsteps of his predecessors. English poetry is full of the art of praise. It is for the very verses which he here excuses that Sir William Watson is likely to be best remembered. His Wordsworth's Grave contains some of his happiest phrases such as, "Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine," and "the wizard twilight Coleridge knew"; and both in that piece and in those on "Shelley's Centenary" and "To Edward Dowden" there is excellent criticism on the several characteristics of Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth.

Which poet of the many who have written verses on the prince of poets has done it best? He was too near for his contemporaries to see him aright, and Ben Jonson's lines in the first folio do not satisfy later critics. Milton's words in L'Allegro

sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild

have been generally thought under the mark, and indeed to be applicable only to a small part of the poet's work. "Fortunately," says Professor Masson, "we can go back to Milton's lines On Shakespeare' in 1630, and be fully satisfied."