If poems
die, it is because there was never true life in them, that is, that true
poetic vitality which no depth of thought, no airiness of fancy, no
sincerity of feeling, can singly communicate, but which leaps throbbing
at touch of that shaping faculty the imagination. Take Aristotle's
ethics, the scholastic philosophy, the theology of Aquinas, the Ptolemaic
system of astronomy, the small politics of a provincial city of the
Middle Ages, mix in at will Grecian, Roman, and Christian mythology, and
tell me what chance there is to make an immortal poem of such an
incongruous mixture. Can these dry bones live? Yes, Dante can create such
a soul under these ribs of death that one hundred and fifty editions of
his poem shall be called for in these last sixty years, the first half of
the sixth century since his death. Accordingly I am apt to believe that
the complaints one sometimes hears of the neglect of our older literature
are the regrets of archaeologists rather than of critics. One does not
need to advertise the squirrels where the nut-trees are, nor could any
amount of lecturing persuade them to spend their teeth on a hollow nut.
On the whole, the Scottish poetry of the fifteenth century has more meat
in it than the English, but this is to say very little. Where it is meant
to be serious and lofty it falls into the same vices of unreality and
allegory which were the fashion of the day, and which there are some
patriots so fearfully and wonderfully made as to relish.
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