Part 9 (2/2)

After all, he was a splendid artist He talish sentence, with difficulty indeed, but having tareat occasion always found him capable, and his treatotten: witness the picture of the Prince President cowering in an inner cha the bloodshed of the _Coup d'etat_, the short speech of Sir Colin Caiven in the exact ade's charge at Balaclava, cul thus--

”The difference that there was in the teiments showed itself in the last ave no utterance except to a low, eager, fiercedesire The Inniskillings went in with a cheer With a rolling prolongation of clangour which resulted from the bends of a line now deformed by its speed, the 'three hundred' crashed in upon the front of the colue Baras

What I am about to say will, no doubt, be set down to tribal e men appeal to in to talk about their poets

The grievance is an old one, of course--at least as old as Mr

Birrell's ”_Obiter Dicta_”: but it has been revived by the little book of verse (”_Quo Musa Tendis_?”) that I have just been reading I laid it down and thought of Mr Birrell's essay on Caentleed all the British bards in a tripos and brought out the Cae men at the top This was a very characteristic performance: but Mr Birrell's is hardly less so in these days when (to quote the epistolary parent) so iven to athleticishtblue singers as though he es Oxford to ”cohtn't to play Shelley because Shelley isn't in residence

Now toabout Kirke White My doctor ht knock them both doith the name of Milton It would be a pretty set-to; but I cannot see that it would affect the relative merits of e

Nor, conversely (as they say at Cae), is it certain, or even likely, that the difference between a butcher or a doctor is the difference between Kirke White and Keats And this talk about ”University” poets seee and Oxford directly encourage poesy, or aiate every year at Oxford, and that the sae with respect to the Chancellor's Prize But--to hark back to the butcher and apothecary--verses are perennially made upon Mr Lipton's Hams and Mrs Allen's Hair Restorer Obviously soiven subject I can understand Calers than Oxford: that is a justifiable boast But how does Cae poets?

Calverley

Oxford expelled Shelley: Canatio versus_ If we press thisof Juvenal, Oxford erred only on the side of thoroughness But that, notoriously, is Oxford's way She expelled Landor, Calverley, and some others My contention is that to expel a man is--however you look at it--better for his poesy than to make a don of him Oxford says, ”You are a poet; therefore this is no place for you Go elsewhere; we set your aspiring soul at large” Cae says: ”You are a poet Let us employ you to fulfil other functions Be a don” She eCalverley in our teeth; whereas, in truth, he is specially to be quoted against them As everybody knows, he was at both Universities, so over hi methods As everybody knows, he went to Balliol first, and his aht So else caused him to be discovered, and Blaydes--he was called Blaydes then--was sent down

nobody can say what splendid effect this ed his nae ent stroke, let him consider the result Calverley wrote a small amount of verse that, reat things with little, you il's as one of Calverley's Forget a single epithet and substitute another, and the result is certain disaster He has the perfection of the phrase--and there it ends I cannot rele line of Calverley's that contains a spark of hu Mr Birrell himself has observed that Calverley is just a bit inhuman But the cause of it does not seeraphy explain it If we are to believe the common report of all who knew Calverley, he was a enerous eraphers tell us also that he was one who seemed to have the world at his feet, one who had only to choose a calling to excel in it Yet he never fulfilled his friends' high expectations What was the reason of it all?

The accident that cut short his career is not wholly to blame, I think At any rate, it will not explain away the exception I have taken to his verse Had that been destined to exhibit the humanity which we seek, some prorown man at the time of that unhappy tumble on the ice

But there is none It is all sheer wit, i Mr Birrell has not supplied the explanatory epithet, so I will try to do so It is ”donnish” Caht appreciation of Calverley thereby, gave hientlee, complained, the other day, that literary distinction was never e

It is the sa e poet; and the claim is just, if the epithet be intended to mark the limitations imposed by that University on his achievement

”JKS”

Of ”JKS,” whose second volume, _Quo Musa Tendis?_ (Macmillan & Bowles), has just come from the press, it is fashi+onable to say that he follows after Calverley, at soed this belief by co CSC on the first page of his earlier volume, _Lapsus Calami_ But, except that JKS does his talent so it to imitate Calverley's forer has a very different wit He is more than academical He thinks and feels upon subjects that were far outside Calverley's scope Aeneral heading of _Paullo Majora Canamus_, there is not one which would have interested his ”master” in the least Calverley appears to have invited his soul after this fashi+on--”Coraduate as he walks about having no knowledge of good or evil Let us make a jest of the books he adether they e ”shop” in terms of the wittiest scholarshi+p But of the very existence of a world of grown-up , or, at least, no care

The problerown-up You have only to read _Paint and Ink_ (a humorous, yet quite serious, address to a painter upon the scope of his art) or _After the Golden Wedding_ (wherein are given the soliloquies of the man and the woman who have been married for fifty years) to assure yourself that if JKS be not Calverley's equal, it is only because his er than ever presented the was a writer of whose eccentricities of style delicious sporttoo; but he has also perpended Browning, and been moulded by him There arenot lived, had never been written Take this, from a writer to a painter:--

”So I do dare claiher than if your task Were doing no more than you say you do: We shall live, if at all, we shall stand or fall, As men before whom the world doffs its mask And who answer the questions our fellows ask”

Many such lines prove our writer's emancipation from servitude to the Calverley fetish, a fetish that, I a men of parts It is pretty, in youth, to play with style as a puppy plays with a bone, to cut teeth upon it But words are, after all, a poor thing without matter JKS's emancipation has come somewhat late; but he has depths in him which he has not sounded yet, and it is quite likely that when he sounds them he may astonish the world rather considerably Now, if wetowards prose ”I go,” he says--

”I go to fly at higher gas nor gold nor fame, I will not, while I live, forsake it”

It is no disparagement to his verse to rejoice over this resolve of his For a youngCalverley will turn in time to prose if he means to write in earnest And JKS may do well or ill, but that he is to be watched has been evident since the days when he edited the _Reflector_[B]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] I am bound to admit that the only authority for this is a note written into the text of Aubrey's _Lives_

[B] The reader will refer to the date at the head of this paper:--