Chesterton's introduction to A Vision of Life: Poems by Darrell Figgis (1909)

Chesterton's introduction to A Vision of Life: Poems by Darrell Figgis (1909)

There are signs of a certain stirring in English poetry, a minor Renaissance of which Francis Thompson may be regarded as the chief ensign and example. It is partly the Elizabethan spirit, that permanent English thing working its way again to the surface; but, of course, like every Renaissance, it is in many ways unlike its origin and model. It is as true in art as it is in religion, that when a man is born again, he is born different. And the latest Elizabethanism has differed not only from the actual Elizabethan work, but from other revivals of it. The great romantic movement which was at its height about the beginning of the nineteenth century, the movement of which Coleridge is perhaps the most typical product, this movement was and even claimed to be a return to the Elizabethan inspiration. This, of course, it was in its revolt against the rhymed rationalism of Pope, in its claim that poetry was a sort of super-sense which Pope would have called nonsense. But there were two elements in the Coleridge and Wordsworth movement which prevented it, splendid as it was, from being perfectly Elizabethan.

The first was a certain craze for simplicity, even for a somewhat barbaric simplicity; a craze which was much connected with the growing influence of Germany and the purely Northern theory of our national origin. People were trying to be Anglo-Saxon instead of English. In style and diction this produced an almost pedantic plainness and love of Teutonic roots which, whatever else it was, was utterly antagonistic to the spirit of the Elizabethans. This business of the plain Saxon speech is entirely appropriate as eulogy on certain suitable things, such as the translation of the Bible; it is permissible as eulogy, but it is intolerable as condemnation. It is certainly part of the beauty of Bunyan's work that it is built out of plain words, just as it is part of the beauty of Westminster Cathedral that it is built out of plain bricks. But as for saying that no building shall be built out of stone or marble or timber, that is quite another matter, and quite an unreasonable one. Coleridge, in the Ancient Mariner, did frequently manage strange and fine effects with the bald words of a ballad. But because I will not go without—

"They fixed on me their stony eyes That in the moon did glitter,"

is no reason at all why I should go without—

"Re-visits thus the glimpses of the moon."

The richness and variegation of the old Elizabethan style permitted peculiar and poignant effects which the Wordsworthian ballad, and even the Tennysonian lyric, did not attempt to revive. The principal objection to writing Anglo-Saxon instead of English is, after all, a very simple one: it is that the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary is one of the smallest in the world, while the English vocabulary is one of the largest.

Mr. Darrell Figgis is one of those who give this impression of a latter-day return to the Elizabethan spirit; that is, to the real Elizabethan spirit which the romantic movement omitted—the spirit of Elizabethan enrichment and involution. The element to which I refer is already sufficiently well known in the work of Francis Thompson, in whom it could be, and indeed has been, called, not only Elizabethan complexity, but even Elizabethan affectation. The work of Mr. Darrell Figgis is less elaborate than that extreme though triumphant example; but it has the same essential qualities of sustained and systematic metrical style, of line linked with line in a process requiring the reader's attention, and remote in its very nature from the startling simplicity of the old romantic ballad. If this kind of poetry prevails, people will have to listen to it rather as they listen to good and rather difficult music, not as they listen to scattered brilliancies in a speech by Mr. Bernard Shaw. Mr. Figgis is even Elizabethan (as was Francis Thompson also) in attempts at abrupt lyric metres, not always easy to achieve. But there was, indeed, another respect in which the early nineteenth century failed to be fully renaissant of the Renaissance. I mean that taste of sickness and aimless revolt which dominated Byron and even Shelley, and discoloured the moods of Coleridge. I am well aware of how much of strong art, of mercy, and egalitarian justice there was in the revolt, and those men in England who were its essential and spiritual enemies (such as Gifford in literature and Castlereagh in politics) are now covered with a contempt which can never be wiped away. Yet, when all is said, the weakness of the indispensable Revolution was in its artistic voices, in their notes of negation, of license, and of despair. When all is said, the Revolution succeeded in France, because it was chiefly an affair of soldiers; the Revolution failed in England, because it was chiefly an affair of poets. If any twopenny placeman could call it mere anarchy, if any tenth-rate Tory can say that it hated God and man, the blame does not lie with the stoical religion of Robespierre or the enormous common sense of Danton; it lies with Byron or Shelley or their belated brother Swinburne.

In this connection it is pleasant to feel that the new stirrings of the old influence are without any recurrence to the mere sentiment of ruin. In this respect the rising men rather follow Browning, who had the hope and heartiness of the Elizabethans, as well as their mystification and elaborate wit; indeed, he had everything of the Elizabethans, except their ease. Francis Thompson spoke from a secure tower of faith. Mr. Darrell Figgis is on the side of the angels. Nothing is more satisfying in his poetry, apart from its many incidental beauties, than the evidence it offers of a certain return to right feeling and faith in life, not as an early dream of transcendentalism, but as an ultimate result of experience. The thing which tired people call optimism is growing in many as a matter of mere fair-mindedness, and the fact is that at last a man of the world may be permitted to admire the world. I will not deny that much of my pleasure in Mr. Figgis' work arises from a sympathy with his serious and sincere enjoyment of beauty and the great things that life begets. I should like to have quoted more than one line from his Vision of Life. But, after all, the ground of my gratitude and mental kinship is mostly in this: that it really is a vision of life, and not merely a vision of destruction.

G. K. CHESTERTON.