WHEN we say that a poet is born not made, it is saying something much more, that Poetry is essentially spontaneous in origin, and that very little of it can therefore be taught on a blackboard; it means that a man is not a poet unless there is some peculiar event in his family history to account for him. It means to me that with the apparent exceptions given in the next section, the poet, like his poetry, is himself the result of the fusion of incongruous forces. Marriages between people of conflicting philosophies of life, widely separated nationalities or (most important) different emotional processes, are likely either to result in children hopelessly struggling with inhibitions or to develop in them a central authority of great resource and most quick witted at compromise. Early influences, other than parental, stimulate the same process. The mind of a poet is like an international conference composed of delegates of both sexes and every shade of political thought, which is trying to decide on a series of problems of which the chairman has himself little previous knowledge—yet this chairman, this central authority, will somehow contrive to sign a report embodying the specialized knowledge and reconciling the apparently hopeless disagreements of all factions concerned. These factions can be called, for convenience, the poet’s sub-personalities.

It is obviously impossible to analyze with accuracy the various elements that once combined to make a phrase in the mind of a poet long dead, but for the sake of illustration here is a fanciful reconstruction of the clash of ideas that gave us Milton’s often quoted “Gadding Vine.” The words, to me, represent an encounter between the poet’s sub-personalities “B” and “C.” Says “B”:—

“What a gentle placid fruitful plant the vine is; I am thinking of putting it in one of my speeches as emblem of the kindly weakness of the Vegetables.”

C replies very tartly:—

“Gentle placid fruitful fiddle-sticks! Why, my good friend, think of the colossal explosive force required to thrust up that vast structure from a tiny seed buried inches deep in the earth; against the force of gravity too, and against very heavy winds. Placidity! Look at its leaves tossing about and its greedy tendrils swaying in search of something to attack. Vegetable indeed! It’s mobile, it’s vicious, it’s more like a swarm of gad-flies.” B continues obstinate, saying “I never heard such nonsense. A vine is still a vine, in spite of your paradoxes.”

“Anyhow, the juice of the vine makes you gad about pretty lively, sometimes,” says C.

“Grapes are the conventional fruit for the sick-room,” retorts B.

“Well, what did the Greeks think about it?” pursues C. “Wasn’t Dionysos the god of the Vine? He didn’t stop rooted all his life in some miserable little Greek valley. He went gadding off to India and brought back tigers.”

“If you are going to appeal to the poets,” returns B, “you can’t disregard the position of the vine in decorative art. It has been conventionalized into the most static design you can find, after the lotus. When I say Vine, that’s quite enough for me, just V for vegetable.”

They are interrupted by A the master spirit who says with authority:—

“Silence, the two of you! I rule a compromise. Call it a “gadding vine” and have done with it.”

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The converse of the proposition stated at the beginning of this section, namely that every one who has the sort of family history mentioned above and is not the prey of inhibitions, will become a poet, is certainly not intended. Poetry is only one outlet for peculiar individual expression; there are also the other arts, with politics, generalship, philosophy, and imaginative business; or merely rhetoric, fantastic jokes and original swearing—