ed a
Government pension; that Mr. Yeats--I believe I am right--never
entertained the idea of supporting himself by poetry; that Mr. Doughty
has not so much as been heard of by one Englishman in a thousand.
Nevertheless, poetry has now become a mentionable subject in decent
society; and it is no longer synonymous with Tennyson or Mr. Kipling.
It has become a modern thing, lending itself to new experiments, a
possible vehicle for new ideas, a means even of becoming notorious on
a grand scale.

But before considering some of these younger authors who represent
newer phases in poetry I should like to dwell a little upon the work
of an elder--one who is not by any means so exquisite a poet as Mr.
Robert Bridges, who cannot compare in creative vigour with the greater
poets who were contemporary with him, nor with his junior, Mr. W.B.
Yeats--but interesting for purposes of comparison because his poetry,
even his quite recent poetry, has in it the ring of a past age, of a
poetic ideal to which we are not likely to return in this century. I
allude to Mr. Edmund Gosse, whom we all think of as a distinguished
student and critic of literature, but it is very seldom that we hear
any allusion to his poetical work. "Anyone who has the patience to
turn over these pages," he says in the Preface to his _Collected
Poems_, "will not need to be told that the voice is not of 1911--it is
of 1872, or of a still earlier date--since my technique was determined
more than forty years ago, and what it was it has remained." When
first I read these words they sounded strangely to me. It was only the
other day that he began to edit a distinguished literary page for a
daily paper. Still more recently I heard him speaking on a public
platform. His activity does not seem to be a thing of yesterday, and
it was he who wrote the most intimate and, perhaps, the most
interesting biographical study of recent years; as editor and critic
he is still amongst active living writers. In reading his later poems
we can see how keen is his desire to retain sensibility to the full,
not to become stereotyped by the past, or blind to the newer beauties.
He is conscious of the passage of the Time-Spirit and the changed ways
of men, and the passionate desire of all vital minds to be fully
percipient to the last.

So, if I pray for length of days,
It is not in the barren pride
That looks behind itself, and says,
"The Past alone is deified!"

Nay