The Bridling of Pegasus Prose Papers on Poetry   By: Alfred Austin (1835-1913)

THE BRIDLING OF PEGASUS

PROSE PAPERS ON POETRY

BY ALFRED AUSTIN

POET LAUREATE

Essay Index Reprint Series

BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC. FREEPORT, NEW YORK ( Originally published by Macmillan and Co. )

First published 1910 Reprinted 1967

Reprinted from a copy in the collections of The New York Public Library Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

When Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus, set forth to kill the Chimera, Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, gave him a golden bridle with which to curb and guide his winged steed. Hence the title of this volume, "The Bridling of Pegasus."

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR ALFRED C. LYALL, K.C.B.

MY DEAR LYALL,

I should think you must have observed, in the course of your reading, that even in the most accredited organs of opinion, principles of literary criticism, either explicitly stated or tacitly assumed, are often utterly ignored, in the notice of some work or other in the self same number. The result can only be to create confusion in the public mind.

In this volume, consisting of papers written at various times during the last thirty years, no such contradiction will, I think, be found. Whether they be deemed sound or otherwise, they are at least coherent; the canons of criticism underlying them being that no verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as Poetry, whatever other qualities it may possess; that Imagination in Poetry, as distinguished from mere Fancy, is the transfiguring of the Real, or actual, into the Ideal, by what Prospero calls his "so potent art"; and, if these conditions are complied with, that the greatness of the poem depends on the greatness of the theme.

To no one so much as to you am I indebted for criticism of the frankest kind. That alone would lead me to ask you to accept the dedication of these pages. But I find a yet further and stronger impulse to do so, in the long and uninterrupted friendship that has subsisted between us, and to which I attach so much value.

Believe me always, Yours most sincerely, ALFRED AUSTIN.

SWINFORD OLD MANOR, January 1910 .

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE ESSENTIALS OF GREAT POETRY 1

THE FEMININE NOTE IN ENGLISH POETRY 28

MILTON AND DANTE: A COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST 60

BYRON AND WORDSWORTH 78

DANTE'S REALISTIC TREATMENT OF THE IDEAL 139

DANTE'S POETIC CONCEPTION OF WOMAN 156

POETRY AND PESSIMISM 170

A VINDICATION OF TENNYSON 197

ON THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO POLITICS 218

A CONVERSATION WITH SHAKESPEARE IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS 241

THE ESSENTIALS OF GREAT POETRY