CHAPTER I

SOME CONTRASTS--HENLEY, THOMPSON, HARDY, KIPLING


Meaning of the word "advance"--the present widespread interest
in poetry--the spiritual warfare--Henley and Thompson--Thomas
Hardy a prophet in literature--_The Dynasts_--his
atheism--his lyrical power--Kipling the Victorian--his future
possibilities--Robert Bridges--Robert W. Service.

Although English poetry of the twentieth century seems inferior to the
poetry of the Victorian epoch, for in England there is no one equal to
Tennyson or Browning, and in America no one equal to Poe, Emerson, or
Whitman, still it may fairly be said that we can discern an advance in
English poetry not wholly to be measured either by the calendar and
the clock, or by sheer beauty of expression. I should not like to say
that Joseph Conrad is a greater writer than Walter Scott; and yet in
_The Nigger of the Narcissus_ there is an intellectual sincerity,
a profound psychological analysis, a resolute intention to discover
and to reveal the final truth concerning the children of the sea, that
one would hardly expect to find in the works of the wonderful Wizard.
Shakespeare was surely a greater poet than Wordsworth; but the man of
the Lakes, with the rich inheritance of two centuries, had a capital
of thought unpossessed by the great dramatist, which, invested by his
own genius, enabled him to draw returns from nature undreamed of by
his mighty predecessor. Wordsworth was not great enough to have
written _King Lear_; and Shakespeare was not late enough to have
written _Tintern Abbey_. Every poet lives in his own time, has a