those who write it. What are the eternal objects of poetry, among all nations and at all times?
They are actions; human actions; possessing an inherent interest in them
selves, and which are to be communicated in an interesting manner by the art
of the poet.1 Vainly will the latter imagine that he has everything in his own
power; that he can make an intrinsically inferior action equally delightful with
a more excellent one by his treatment of it; he may indeed compel us to admire
his skill, but his work will possess, within itself, an incurable defect. The poet, then, has in the first place to select an excellent action; and what
actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal
to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which
subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These
feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent
and the same also. The modernness or antiquity of an action, therefore, has
nothing to do with its fitness for poetical representation; this depends upon
its inherent qualities. To the elementary part of our nature, to our passions,
that which is great and passionate is eternally interesting; and interesting
solely in proportion to its greatness and to its passion. A great human action
of a thousand years ago is more interesting to it than a smaller human action
of today, even though upon the representation of this last the most consum
mate skill may have been expended, and though it has the advantage of appeal
ing by its modern language, familiar manners, and contemporary allusions, to
all our transient feelings and interests. These, however, have no right to
9. In the Spectator of April 2nd, 1 853. The words 'intelligent critic' was R. S. Rintoul, editor of the quoted were not used with reference to poems of Spectator. mine [Arnold's note]. According to Arnold, the 1. Cf. Aristotle's Poetics 6.
.
PREFACE TO POEMS (1853) / 1 379
demand of a poetical work that it shall satisfy them; their claims are to be
directed elsewhere. Poetical works belong to the domain of our permanent
passions; let them interest these, and the voice of all subordinate claims upon
them is at once silenced.
Achilles, Prometheus, Clytemnestra, Dido?what modern poem presents
personages as interesting, even to us moderns, as these personages of an
'exhausted past'? We have the domestic epic dealing with the details of mod
ern life which pass daily under our eyes;2 we have poems representing modern
personages in contact with the problems of modern life, moral, intellectual,
and social; these works have been produced by poets the most distinguished
of their nation and time; yet I fearlessly assert that Hermann and Dorothea,
Childe Harold, Jocelyn, The Excursion,3 leave the reader cold in comparison
with the effect produced upon him by the latter books of the Iliad, by the
Oresteia, or by the episode of Dido.4 And why is this? Simply because in the
three last-named cases the action is greater, the personages nobler, the situ
ations more intense: and this is the true basis of the interest in a poetical work,
and this alone. It may be urged, however, that past actions may be interesting in themselves,
but that they are not to be adopted by the modern poet, because it is impossible
for him to have them clearly present to his own mind, and he cannot therefore
feel them deeply, nor represent them forcibly. But this is not necessarily the
case. The externals of a past action, indeed, he cannot know with the precision
of a contemporary; but his business is with its essentials. The outward man of
Oedipus or of Macbeth, the houses in which they lived, the ceremonies of
their courts, he cannot accurately figure to himself; but neither do they essen
