RECENT TENDENCIES IN EUROPEAN POETRY

WITH OCCASIONAL REFERENCES TO THE NOVEL, DRAMA, AND CRITICISM

PROFESSOR C.H. HERFORD


When Matthew Arnold declared that every age receives its best
interpretation in its poetry, he was making a remark hardly conceivable
before the century in which it was made. Poetry in the nineteenth
century was, on the whole, more charged with meaning, more rooted in the
stuff of humanity and the heart of nature, less a mere province of
_belles-lettres_ than ever before. Consciously or unconsciously it
reflected the main currents in the mentality of European man, and the
reflection was often most clear where it was least conscious. Two of
these main currents are:

(1) The vast and steady enlargement of our knowledge of the compass, the
history, the potencies, of Man, Nature, the World.

(2) The growth in our sense of the _worth_ of every part of existence.

Certain aspects of these two processes are popularly known as 'the
advance of science', and 'the growth of democracy'. But how far
'science' reaches beyond the laboratory and the philosopher's study, and
'democracy' beyond political freedom and the ballot-box, is precisely
what poetry compels us to understand; and not least the poetry of the
last sixty years with which we are to-day concerned.