WHEN Aristotle lays down that poets describe the thing that might be, but that the historian (like the natural historians above mentioned) merely describes that which has been, and that poetry is something of “more philosophic, graver import than history because its statements are of a universal nature” so far his idea of poetry tallies with our own. But when he explains his “might be” as meaning the “probable and necessary” according to our every-day experience of life, then we feel the difference between the Classical and Romantic conceptions of the art—Aristotle was trying to weed poetry of all the symbolic extravagances and impossibilities of the dream state in which it seems to have originated, and to confine it within rational and educative limits. Poetry was with him only an intuitive imitation of how typical men think and react upon each other when variously stimulated. It was what we might call the straight goods of thought conveyed in the traditional magic hampers; but there proved to be difficulties in the packing; the Classical ideal was, in practice, modified by the use of heroic diction and action, conventional indications to the audience that “imitation” was not realism, and that there must be no criticisms on that score; every one must “go under” to the hypnotic suggestion of the buskin and the archaic unnatural speech, and for once think ideally. For the same reason the Classical doctrine lays stress on the importance of the set verse-forms and the traditional construction of drama. For the benefit of my scientific readers, if my literary friends promise not to listen to what I am saying, I will attempt a definition of Classical and Romantic notions of Poetry:—

Classical is characteristic and Romantic is Metamorphic, that is, though they are both expressions of a mental conflict, in Classical poetry this conflict is expressed within the confines of waking probability and logic, in terms of the typical interaction of typical minds; in Romantic poetry the conflict is expressed in the illogical but vivid method of dream-changings.

The dream origin of Romantic Poetry gives it the advantage of putting the audience in a state of mind ready to accept it; in a word, it has a naturally hypnotic effect. Characteristic poetry, which is social rather than personal, and proudly divorced from the hit-and-miss methods of the dream, yet feels the need of this easy suggestion to the audience for ideal thinking; and finds it necessary to avoid realism by borrowing shreds of accredited metamorphic diction and legend and building with them an illusion of real metamorphism. So the Hermit Crab, and once it has taken up a cast-off shell to cover its nakedness, it becomes a very terror among the whelks. The borrowed Metamorphism is hardened to a convention and a traditional form, and can be trusted almost inevitably to induce the receptive state in an average audience wherever used. Such a convention as I mean is the May-day dream of the Mediaeval rhymed moralities or the talking beasts of the fabulists.

Sometimes, however, owing to a sudden adventurous spirit appearing in the land, a nation’s Classical tradition is broken by popular ridicule and the reappearance of young Metamorphic Poets. But after a little paper-bloodshed and wranglings in the coffee-houses, the Classical tradition reappears, dressed up in the cast-off finery of the pioneer Metamorphics (who have by this time been succeeded by licentious and worthless pyrotechnists), and rules securely again. It is only fair to observe that the Romantic Revivalist often borrows largely from some Classical writer so obscured by Time and corrupt texts as to seem a comparative Romantic. This complicated dog-eat-dog process is cheerfully called “The Tradition of English Poetry.”

There is an interesting line of investigation which I have no space to pursue far, in a comparison between the Classicism of Wit and the Romanticism of Humour.

Wit depends on a study of the characteristic reactions of typical men to typically incongruous circumstances, and changed little from Theophrastus to Joe Miller. It depends for its effect very largely on the set form and careful diction, e. g:—

A certain inn-keeper of Euboea, with gout in his fingers, returned to his city after sacrificing an Ox to Delphic Apollo.... The celebrated wit, Sidney Smith, one day encountered Foote the comedian, in the Mall.... An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotchman agreed on a wager of one hundred guineas....

That is Classicism.

Romantic humour is marked by the extravagant improbability of dream-vision and by the same stereoscopic expression as in Romantic poetry.

Would Theophrastus have deigned to laugh at the fabliau of “The Great Panjandrum himself with the little round button at top?” I think not. Our leading living Classical poet was recently set a Romantic riddle as a test of his humour, “What did the tooth-paste say to the tooth brush?” Answer: “Squeeze me and I’ll meet you outside the Tube.” The bard was angry. “Who on earth squeezes his tube of tooth-paste with his tooth brush? Your riddle does not hold water.” He could understand the fable convention of inanimate objects talking, but this other was not “the probable and necessary.”