and last, while the seventeen or more
volumes of novels represent correspondingly about four-and-twenty
years. One is reminded by this disproportion in time and result how
much more concise and quintessential expression becomes when given
in rhythmic form than when shaped in the language of prose.'

_Present Condition of English Poetry_

Shall we, or shall we not, be serious? To be serious nowadays is to be
ill-mannered, and what, murmurs the cynic, does it matter? We have our
opinion; we know that there is a good deal of good poetry in the
Georgian book, a little in _Wheels_.[13] We know that there is much bad
poetry in the Georgian book, and less in _Wheels_. We know that there is
one poem in _Wheels_ beside the intense and sombre imagination of which
even the good poetry of the Georgian book pales for a moment. We think
we know more than this. What does it matter? Pick out the good things,
and let the rest go.

[Footnote 13: _Georgian Poetry_, 1918-1919. Edited by E.M. (The
Poetry Bookshop.)

_Wheels_. Fourth Cycle. (Oxford: B.H. Blackwell.)]

And yet, somehow, this question of modern English poetry has become
important for us, as important as the war, important in the same way as
the war. We can even analogise. _Georgian Poetry_ is like the Coalition
Government; _Wheels_ is like the Radical opposition. Out of the one
there issues an indefinable odour of complacent sanctity, an unctuous
redolence of _union sacree_; out of the other, some acidulation of
perversity. In the coalition poets we find the larger number of good
men, and the larger number of bad ones; in the opposition poets we find
no bad ones with the coalition badness, no good ones with the coalition
goodness, but in a single case a touch of the apocalyptic, intransigent,
passionate honesty that is the mark of the martyr of art or life.

On both sides we have the corporate and the individual flavour; on both
sides we have those individuals-by-courtesy whose flavour is almost
wholly corporate; on both sides the corporate flavour is one that we
find intensely disagreeable. In the coalition we find it noxious, in the
opposition no worse than irritating. No doubt this is because we
recognise a tendency to take the coalition seriously, while the
opposition is held to be ridiculous. But both the coalition and the
opposition--we use both terms in their corporate sense--are unmistakably
the product of the present age. In that