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Flower of the Mind By: Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell (1847-1922) |
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INTRODUCTION Partial collections of English poems, decided by a common subject
or bounded by narrow dates and periods of literary history, are
made at very short intervals, and the makers are safe from the
reproach of proposing their own personal taste as a guide for the
reading of others. But a general Anthology gathered from the whole
of English literature the whole from Chaucer to Wordsworth by a
gatherer intent upon nothing except the quality of poetry, is a
more rare enterprise. It is hardly to be made without tempting the
suspicion nay, hardly without seeming to hazard the confession of
some measure of self confidence. Nor can even the desire to enter
upon that labour be a frequent one the desire of the heart of one
for whom poetry is veritably "the complementary life" to set up a
pale for inclusion and exclusion, to add honours, to multiply
homage, to cherish, to restore, to protest, to proclaim, to depose;
and to gain the consent of a multitude of readers to all those
acts. Many years, then some part of a century may easily pass
between the publication of one general anthology and the making of
another. The enterprise would be a sorry one if it were really arbitrary,
and if an anthologist should give effect to passionate preferences
without authority. An anthology that shall have any value must be
made on the responsibility of one but on the authority of many.
There is no caprice; the mind of the maker has been formed for
decision by the wisdom of many instructors. It is the very study
of criticism, and the grateful and profitable study, that gives the
justification to work done upon the strongest personal impulse, and
done, finally, in the mental solitude that cannot be escaped at the
last. In another order, moral education would be best crowned if
it proved to have quick and profound control over the first
impulses; its finished work would be to set the soul in a state of
law, delivered from the delays of self distrust; not action only,
but the desires would be in an old security, and a wish would come
to light already justified. This would be the second if it were
not the only liberty. Even so an intellectual education might
assuredly confer freedom upon first and solitary thoughts, and
confidence and composure upon the sallies of impetuous courage. In
a word, it should make a studious anthologist quite sure about
genius. And all who have bestowed, or helped in bestowing, the
liberating education have given their student the authority to be
free. Personal and singular the choice in such a book must be, not
without right. Claiming and disclaiming so much, the gatherers may follow one
another to harvest, and glean in the same fields in different
seasons, for the repetition of the work can never be altogether a
repetition. The general consent of criticism does not stand still;
and moreover, a mere accident has until now left a poet of genius
of the past here and there to neglect or obscurity. This is not
very likely to befall again; the time has come when there is little
or nothing left to discover or rediscover in the sixteenth century
or the seventeenth; we know that there does not lurk another
Crashaw contemned, or another Henry Vaughan disregarded, or another
George Herbert misplaced. There is now something like finality of
knowledge at least; and therefore not a little error in the past is
ready to be repaired. This is the result of time. Of the slow
actions and reactions of critical taste there might be something to
say, but nothing important. No loyal anthologist perhaps will
consent to acknowledge these tides; he will hardly do his work well
unless he believe it to be stable and perfect; nor, by the way,
will he judge worthily in the name of others unless he be resolved
to judge intrepidly for himself. Inasmuch as even the best of all poems are the best upon
innumerable degrees, the size of most anthologies has gone far to
decide what degrees are to be gathered in and what left without... Continue reading book >>
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Literature |
Poetry |
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