Victorian Poetry

JOHN LUCAS

Asia was for a time widely admired after its publication in 1879. Unfortu-
nately for Edwin Arnold, as Crowell says, the poem was felt "in orthodox
circles, t o be too sympathetic toward Buddhism" (148). More importantly,
neither he nor the other possible candidates had given such service to the
Tory party as had Austin, who founded the National Review and remained
generally untiring in what Crowell calls his "sycophantic bootlicking"
(155). Crowell quotes Meredith's observation that "it will suit little Alfred
to hymn the babies of the house of Hanover" (155). 18 The soubriquet stuck.
The Laureateship had passed from Alfred the Great to Alfred the Little.

Ill

So far we have seen that at the end of the nineteenth century poetry was
important to many people in England because its practitioners were
expected to uphold orthodox views. The idea of "England" is crucial here.
The other constituent parts of the United Kingdom do not come into this
particular concept of nation. Although Nick Russel gives the subtitle
"Britain's Laureates" to his study Poets by Appointment, he begins his
introduction by remarking: "Before Charles IPs time a number of English
kings had singled out the occasional contemporary poet for royal favours"
(1). The selection of Laureates had at first been by English kings, and later
by Lord Chamberlains and Prime Ministers, officials of state who saw
themselves speaking for England rather than for the United Kingdom as a
whole. Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister in a position
to appoint a Laureate, chose John Masefield in 1930. Russel suggests that
MacDonald's preferred choice was A.E. Housman (author of A Shropshire
Lad [1896]), while King George V plumped for the jingoistic Rudyard
Kipling (who made his name as a poet with Barrack-Room Ballads [1892]),
although there was good reason to believe that each writer would have
declined the position (7). Masefield was an acceptable compromise. The
Scottish MacDonald would never have thought of offering the post to a
fellow Scotsman. As to a sister Scotswoman or, for that matter, an English-
woman, i t remained unthinkable.
At the end of the nineteenth century, when poetry was a national issue,
the appointment of the Laureate mattered far more than ever before. That
poetry was an issue for England becomes clear as soon as we consider how
the state honored certain poets - Sir Lewis Morris, Sir Edwin Arnold,
above all Lord Tennyson (Watson received his knighthood in 1917) - when
for novelists such public recognition was out of the question. Imagine Lord
Dickens or Sir Thomas Hardy. Whoever spoke for poetry in an official
capacity had obviously to speak for ideologically official England: An-

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