ments of his nature should be moved; and dramas of which the action, though
taken from a long-distant mythic time, yet was calculated to accomplish this
in a higher degree than that of the Persae, stood higher in his estimation
accordingly. The Greeks felt, no doubt, with their exquisite sagacity of taste,
that an action of present times was too near them, too much mixed up with
what was accidental and passing, to form a sufficiently grand, detached, and
self-subsistent object for a tragic poem: such objects belonged to the domain
of the comic poet, and of the lighter kinds of poetry. For the more serious
kinds, for pragmatic poetry, to use an excellent expression of Polybius,8 they
were more difficult and severe in the range of subjects which they permitted.
Their theory and practice alike, the admirable treatise of Aristotle, and the
unrivaled works of their poets, exclaim with a thousand tongues?'All depends
upon the subject; choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the feeling
of its situations; this done, everything else will follow.' But for all kinds of poetry alike there was one point on which they were
rigidly exacting; the adaptability of the subject to the kind of poetry selected,
and the careful construction of the poem.
How different a way of thinking from this is ours! We can hardly at the
present day understand what Menander9 meant when he told a man who
inquired as to the progress of his comedy that he had finished it, not having
5. The son of a legendary Greek hero, who, like 7. Aeschylus's Persians (472 B.C.E.) portrays the Orestes, avenged his father's death by killing his Greek victory over the Persian invaders, which had mother. He was the subject of several Greek plays occurred only a few years before the play was pro- now lost. Merope. queen of Messene in Greece, duced. appears in plays by Euripides and in Arnold's own 8. Greek historian (ca. 200-ca. 118 b.c.e.). play Merope (1858). 9. Greek writer of comedies (ca. 342?ca. 292 6. Terrifying, awe-inspiring. B.C.E.).
.
PREFACE TO POEMS (1853) / 1 379
yet written a single line, because he had constructed the action of it in his
mind. A modern critic would have assured him that the merit of his piece
depended on the brilliant things which arose under his pen as he went along.
We have poems which seem to exist merely for the sake of single lines and
passages; not for the sake of producing any total impression. We have critics
who seem to direct their attention merely to detached expressions, to the lan
guage about the action, not to the action itself, I verily think that the majority
of them do not in their hearts believe that there is such a thing as a total
impression to be derived from a poem at all, or to be demanded from a poet;
they think the term a commonplace of metaphysical criticism. They will permit
the poet to select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as it
will, provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine writing, and with
a shower of isolated thoughts and images. That is, they permit him to leave
their poetical sense ungratified, provided that he gratifies their rhetorical sense
and their curiosity. Of his neglecting to gratify these, there is little danger. He
needs rather to be warned against the danger of attempting to gratify these
alone; he needs rather to be perpetually reminded to prefer his action to every
thing else; so to treat this, as to permit its inherent excellences to develop
themselves, without interruption from the intrusion of his personal peculiar
ities; most fortunate, when he most entirely succeeds in effacing himself, and
in enabling a noble action to subsist as it did in nature. But the modern critic not only permits a false practice; he absolutely pre
scribes false aims.?'A true allegory of the state of one's own mind in a rep
resentative history,' the poet is told, 'is perhaps the highest thing that one can
attempt in the way of poetry.'' And accordingly he attempts it. An allegory of
