W. B. Yeats did start, or was an important part of, a new and fertile period. But it was an Irish and not an English period. It is indeed one of the curiosities of literature (and races) that the Celtic revival so little influenced poetry in the sister-island. Yeats, "A. E." and James Stephens affected the English hardly at all. It is, however, true that for Ireland the loth century began in the '9os and what a century! Yeats and the Abbey Theatre, rather than all the politicians who spoke and died for Erin, were the fathers of the Revolution. Poets in Ireland always, more than elsewhere, have been recognized as "the movers and shakers Of the world for ever." Yeats wrote the first draft of the Constitution of the Free State in "The Lake-isle of Innisfree." The answer to the objectors, therefore, remains. The typical poets of the '9os did not look forward eagerly, but backward contemptuously. They were not creating; they were for the most part sneering. The more considerable names either like Yeats belonged to Irish literature, or like the other three belonged to themselves only, or with Kipling to himself and certain echoes overseas. But there is still A. E. Housman. In his case it is cer tain that he did profoundly influence his fellow-writers, but it is more open to question whether it was not rather with the last enchantment of the old than with the first of the new age. Per haps Housman is no more than Robert Louis Stevenson signalling in vain from his Pacific island to the future. Because, though this has not been generally accepted, if at all, it is Stevenson in verse that was the most potent influence in the early part of the loth century, and that influence was exerted in part at least through Housman, a disciple so unconscious of his master that he would certainly repudiate him. Yet the two are in essence the same—poets of comment, and not of participation. They have each a small neat explanation of the events they so competently, and sometimes so endearingly, describe. The older man is the more human, the younger the better poet. But Housman carried on the Stevenson note of deliberate interpretation with feeling introduced from without. Housman attracted, and deserved to at tract, general attention, but when his Last Poems was published three or four years ago, it became clear that he belonged to the world of Stevenson and not to ours. His lads found the brook of the loth century too broad for leaping. They do not lie on the further side, but they stand there a little wistful and dim against a background of-end-of-the-century self-consciousness. They be long to the horizon whose margin fades behind us "for ever and for ever as we move." Predecessors of the New Age.—Of the writers who carry over from the '9os to the first decade of the loth century (for pur poses of the almanac) none can be saluted even as the St. John the Baptist of the New World. Three at least deserve mention as writers of importance, though each must be denied the title of the forerunner—John Davidson, "Michael Field" and Stephen Phil lips. Of these Davidson in his baffled fury, his fundamental inability to clinch with his hated antagonist because he never recognized him, is nearest to being the prophet. He did not hate Victoria, or the Victorians. He did not hate the gently anaemic Rhymers. But what inspired his fits of temper, that sometimes rose almost into a genuine poetry of hate? Life, of course, but it is doubtful whether he ever knew exactly what in life it was that bit him. Had it ever declared itself then Davidson might have set the trumpet of the herald to his mouth. As it was the instrument was something of a broken reed. "Michael Field," the name chosen by those two remarkable women—aunt and niece—who composed their poems together, could never for all their lovely cadence, have been more than a museum-piece in a living world of letters. Though there is in bulk a surprising quantity of their work, and though much of it will endure, yet even while it was written it had the air of a gracious antique. It was a little as though those delicate fingers had discovered a lost art, and were, like Count Caloveglia in South Wind, moulding a Faun with the enigmatic ecstasy of some disciple of Praxiteles. Their best poems had an old and final ring. They were as lonely as a Ming vase in a world of Chelsea pottery.
Stephen Phillips is a very different case, and much more difficult to assess. In his poetic youth the fixed stars of poetry were crowded by the critics to give place to this new and larger lumi nary. Within less than a quarter of a century he passed "unwept, unhonoured and unsung." So much so that recently when a post humous play of his was published the writer who had undertaken the preface used it to indicate his author's remarkable short comings. The truth about Stephen Phillips's rise and fall has not
been told yet, and certainly the present estimate of his work is unfair to the writer who rediscovered the blank verse line. The rhetoric of Herod will disappear. It was inspired rather by Beer bohm Tree than the tetrarch. But "Marpessa" will quietly and in due course climb to its modest place among the quieter candles of the night. For the purpose of this essay, however, Stephen Phillips is important because of the disappointment he pro voked. It was believed that the great tradition of English verse that Swinburne had for all his exotic beauty failed to renew, had returned. The blank verse line is the most English and at its best the most decisive of metres. In Stephen Phillips it was hoped that it had resumed its old immortal mastery in a new prevailing way.
Stephen Phillips had some of the manner, but none of the sub stance to restore the accent of the heroes. He had a genuine singing impulse, and hands fit for a flute with two stops. He was asked to play the organ in the Albert Hall. He should have been strong enough to refuse, but the blame attaches not a little to all the noisy pack of fawning critics who bayed him on to his doom. Whoever's the fault, at least he left no mark on his successors.
They were pressing on. At the very moment when the world was beginning to doubt its new idol, and in their doubt of him renewing their despair in poetry in general, the New Age was be ginning in Oxford with a swarthy malcontent called Flecker, at Cambridge with a group which Rupert Brooke led by unques tioned right, and outside Cambridge, but still in the polite world, with a certain Walter Ramal (Walter de la Mare), and a much less certain John Masefield, and outside the world altogether with W. H. Davies, who was not so much a man on the tramp as a bird on the wing. But before all these gathering rivulets converged into the broad flood of Georgianism that forced its way ever widening into the threshhold of the War and, beyond it, strained and parcelled into the swamps of death, there were still the names of Herbert Trench, Sturge Moore, Henry Newbolt and Laurence Binyon, each with his individual claim and contribution. While roaring and laughing by their side, like two huge children in H. G. Wells's Food of the Gods, Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton shouted to each other across the world, and "when all church bells were silent, their caps and bells were heard." It is perhaps not necessary to attempt to range the first three in this list. Herbert Trench was a far from negligible poet, but he wrote in the grand manner at a time when events were conducting themselves in a manner at once small and obscene. His verse was too much a stranger to the times in which he lived ever to be at home there. He speaks, therefore, always a little like a foreigner. Sturge Moore, also a poet of distinction, perhaps influenced his generation of writers more by his personality than his work, interesting and diverse as it is. He has to his credit not merely a brilliant anthology of "Michael Field," but a solid body of mature and constructive criticism. Henry Newbolt, who is at times unfairly bracketed with Alfred Noyes as a poet of "patriot ism," has suffered by succeeding with his worst work. "Drake's Drum" had (and continues to have) almost a music-hall success. The result is that Newbolt has quite unfairly been classified as a minor Kipling—another partisan of the white man's beneficent destiny to take up his dividends. But that is wholly unjust to a poet with a clear perception of realities, and an almost humble readiness to adapt his manner to his subject. He came a little too early to belong to the new movement. If there had been no new movement his name would have stood very high. Nor need we re-classify Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton. They refused to be treated as grown-up poets. They were Trinculo, Falstaff, or Father Christmas in The Christmas Carol, and they deceived the world into believing them to be mere wassaillers. They almost deceived themselves, but not quite. Both, when they hated, wrote poetic satire unequalled since Pope, and Chesterton, at least, when he loved had a star hidden up his sleeve. In vain he assured his audience to the contrary. Why, his very words are on fire! But Belloc and Chesterton stood outside the main stream of development, watching it as though two players in a football match should stand among the spectators applauding heartily. In the circumstances it is difficult to accuse them of desertion : it is better to take them for what they are—and to be thankful. We may turn from them to the players, who are thinking and who thought of nothing but the game.