e, daily denied; the
counterpart of this power which envisages the ideal in the conduct of
one's own or the nation's affairs and unfalteringly pursues it is held
up to ridicule. Opportunism in politics has its complement in
opportunism in poetry. Mr Lloyd George's moods are reflected in Mr
----'s. And, beneath these heights, we have the queer spectacle of a
whole race of very young poets who somehow expect to attain poetic
intensity by the physical intensity with which they look at any
disagreeable object that happens to come under their eye. Perhaps they
will find some satisfaction in being reckoned among the curiosities of
literature a hundred years hence; it is certainly the only satisfaction
they will have. They, at any rate, have a great deal to gain from the
acid of philosophical criticism. If a reaction to life has in itself the
seeds of an intuitive comprehension it will stand explication. If a
young poet's nausea at the sight of a toothbrush is significant of
anything at all except bad upbringing, then it is capable of being
refined into a vision of life and of being expressed by means of the
appropriate mechanism or myth. But to register the mere facts of
consciousness, undigested by the being, without assessment or
reinforcement by the mind is, for all the connection it has with poetry,
no better than to copy down the numbers of one's bus-tickets.

We do not wish to suggest that Sir Henry Newbolt would regard this
lengthy gloss upon his book as legitimate deduction. He, we think, is a
good deal more tolerant than we are; and he would probably hesitate to
work out the consequences of the principles which he enunciates and
apply them vigorously to the present time. But as a vindication of the
supreme place of poetry as poetry in human life, as a stimulus to
critical thought and a guide to exquisite appreciation of which his
essay on Chaucer is an honourable example--_A New Study of English
Poetry_ deserves all the praise that lies in our power to give.

[MARCH, 1920.

_Coleridge's Criticism_

It is probably true that _Biographia Literaria_ is the best book of
criticism in the English language; nevertheless, it is rash to assume
that it is a book of criticism of the highest excellence, even when it
has passed through the salutary process of drastic editing, such as that
to which, in the present case,[15] the competent hands of Mr George
Sampson have submitted it. Its garrulity, its digressions, its v