The Character of English Poetry – 2 59poetry, which loves to dwell with all its weight upon the presen-
tation of life and action, feeling and passion and to give that its
full force and make of it the basis and the source and, not only
the point of reference, but the utility of all else. A strong hold
upon this life, the earth-life, is the characteristic of the English
mind, and it is natural that it should take possession of its poetry.
The pure Celtic genius leans towards the opposite extreme: it
seems to care little for the earth-life for its own sake and has
little hold on it or only a light and ethereal hold; it accepts it as
a starting-point for the expression of other-life, but is attracted
by all that is hidden and secret. The Latin mind insists on the
presentation of life, but for the purposes of thought; its eye is
on the universal truths and realities of which life is the visible
expression, — not the remoter, the spiritual or soul-truths, but
those which present themselves to the clarities of the intelligence.
But the English mind looks at life and loves it for its own sake, in
all its externalities, its play of outer individualities, its immediate
subjective idiosyncrasies. Even when it is strongly attracted by
other motives, the intellectual, the aesthetic or the spiritual, it
seldom follows these with a completely disinterested fidelity, but
comes back with them on the external life and tries to subject
them to its mould and use them for its purpose. This turn is not
universal, — Blake escapes from it; nor is it the single dominant
power, — Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth have their hearts
elsewhere: but it is a constant power; it attracts even the poets
who have not a real genius for it and vitiates their work by the
immixture of an alien motive.
This objective and external turn might be strong enough in
some other arts, — fiction, for instance, or painting or sculpture,
— to create a clear national tradition and principle of form, but
not easily in poetry. For here the mere representation of life
cannot be enough, however vivid or however strongly subjected
to the law of poetic beauty it may be. Poetry must strive at least
towards a presentation from within and not at simple artistic
reproduction; and the principle of presentation must be some-
thing more than that of the eye on the visible object. It is by a
process from within, a passing of all one meets, thinks or feels