第14章 Lanier's Theory of Poetry(2)

In the second place, Lanier thinks that a poet's knowledge of his art should be scientific.It was this that led him to write `The Science of English Verse', the motto of which is, "But the best conceptions cannot be, save where science and genius are."In `The English Novel' he declares that "not a single verse was ever written by instinct alone since the world began,"and fortifies his statement by Ben Jonson's tribute to Shakespeare, --"For a good poet's made as well as born, And such wert thou."But Lanier clearly saw that no formal laws and no amount of scientific knowledge could alone make a poet, as appears from the motto above quoted, from the closing chapter of `The Science of English Verse', which tells us that the educated love of beauty is the artist's only law, and from this other motto, from Sir Philip Sidney: "A Poet, no industrie can make, if his owne Genius bee not carried unto it."`The English Novel', p.33.

In the third place, Lanier holds that a moral intention on the part of an artist does not interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty of his work; that in art the controlling consideration is rather moral than artistic beauty; but that moral beauty and artistic beauty, so far from being distinct or opposed, are convergent and mutually helpful.

This thesis he upholds in the following eloquent and cogent passage:

"Permit me to recall to you in the first place that the requirement has been from time immemorial that wherever there is contest as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the moral side prevail, all is lost.Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination of tender curves and spheric softness that ever stood for woman;yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh, if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the physical beauty suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor -- unless he be portraying a moral ugliness for a moral purpose -- may as well give over his marble for paving-stones.Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not accept his work.For indeed we may say that he who has not yet perceived how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent lines which run back into a common ideal origin, and who therefore is not afire with moral beauty just as with artistic beauty -- that he, in short, who has not come to that stage of quiet and eternal frenzy in which the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light, within him; he is not yet the great artist." By copious quotations Lanier then shows that "many fine and beautiful souls appear after a while to lose all sense of distinction between these terms, Beauty, Truth, Love, Wisdom, Goodness, and the like," and concludes thus: "And if this be true, cannot one say with authority to the young artist, -- whether working in stone, in color, in tones, or in character-forms of the novel:

so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that unless you are suffused -- soul and body, one might say --with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love -- that is, the love of all things in their proper relation --unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty;unless you are suffused with beauty, do not meddle with love;unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness; --in a word, unless you are suffused with beauty, truth, wisdom, goodness, AND love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist."`The English Novel', p.272 f.

`The English Novel', p.280.Of the numerous discussions of this thesis, the student should consult at least those by Matthew Arnold (`Preface' to his edition of `Wordsworth's Poems'), John Ruskin (`Stones of Venice', vol.iii., chap.iv.), and Victor Hugo (`William Shakespeare', Book VI.).