How then does the history of poetry in Europe during these sixty years
stand in relation to these underlying processes? On the surface, at
least, it hardly resembles growth at all. In France above all--the
literary focus of Europe, and its sensitive thermometer--the movement of
poetry has been, on the surface, a succession of pronounced and even
fanatical schools, each born in reaction from its precursor, and
succumbing to the triumph of its successor. Yet a deeper scrutiny will
perceive that these warring artists were, in fact, groups of successive
discoverers, who each added something to the resources and the scope of
poetry, and also retained and silently adopted the discoveries of the
past; while the general line of advance is in the direction marked by
the two main currents I have described. Nowhere else is the succession
of phases so sharp and clear as in France. But since France does reflect
more sensitively than any other country the movement of the mind of
Europe, and since her own mind has, more than that of any other country,
radiated ideas and fashions out over the rest of Europe, these phases
are in fact traceable also, with all kinds of local and national
variations, in Italy and Spain, Germany and England, and I propose to
take this fact as the basis of our present very summary and diagrammatic
view. The three phases of the sixty years are roughly divided by the
years 1880 and 1900.

The first, most clearly seen in the French Parnassians, is in close, if
unconscious, sympathy with the temper of science. Poetry, brought to the
limit of expressive power, is used to express, with the utmost veracity,
precision, and impersonal self-suppression, the beauty and the tragedy
of the world. It sought Hellenic lucidity and Hellenic calm--in the
example most familiar to us, the Stoic calm and 'sad lucidity' of
Matthew Arnold.