PREFACE THE substance of this book was delivered as a series of lectures on the Earl Foundation before the Pacific Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California, during the spring of 1917. The subject was one which had long interested me. I had spoken on it before the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1913 and subsequently on several occasions had found for it eager auditors and critics among college students. This frequent traversing of the same ground has helped me to perceive more plainly the path to be followed and has controlled the inclination to turn to this side or that in search of better prospects. My aim is a narrow one. The book is not a history of English poetry, not even an outline. At only half a dozen periods in the long and magnificent course of that poetry do I examine it, those periods being separated by intervals widely dissimilar and occupied by poets not always of the first rank. Some of the greatest names in our literature are not touched at all. The drama is omitted altogether; and I have not inquired how far changes in prose writing attended those traced here in poetry. Even my seven chosen torch-bearers I have dealt with very imperfectly, turning to them only for the light they throw on the connected march of mind. In my judgment the English understanding of poetry has unfolded itself slowly, passing through certain well-marked crises or epochs at each of which has stood a revolter from past practice who, setting up antagonistic, yet really supplemental, conceptions of poetry has thrown open tracts of emotion which our beautiful art had not previously touched. Of course minor changes of this sort occur continually. I have wished to fix attention on the half-dozen fundamental, logical and productive crises which have brought us the rich poetry we now possess and may yet bring us richer still. There are dangers in such an undertaking. No important change comes about without long preparation, however great the genius who finally perceives its significance and gives it recognizable form. So condensed an account as mine is apt to make history appear a thing of leaps and bounds, as if settled practice suddenly gave way to novelty. But I have thought |