Andrew Lang

Letters on Literature Andrew Lang

My dear Wincott, -I hear that a book has lately been published by an American lady, in which all the modern poets are represented. The singers have been induced to make their own selections, and put forward, as Mr. Browning says, their best foot, anapæst or trochee, or whatever it may be. My information goes further, and declares that there are but eighteen poets of England to sixty inspired Americans. This Western collection of modern minstrelsy shows how very dangerous it is to write even on the English poetry of the day. Eighteen is long odds against a single critic, and Major Bellenden, in "Old Mortality," tells us that three to one are odds as long as ever any warrior met victoriously, and that warrior was old Corporal Raddlebanes. I decline the task; I am not going to try to estimate either the eighteen of England or the sixty of the States. It is enough to speak about three living poets, in addition to those masters treated of in my last letter. Two of the three you will have guessed at-Mr. Swinburne and Mr. William Morris. The third, I dare say, you do not know even by name. I think he is not one of the English eighteen-Mr. Robert Bridges. His muse has followed the epicurean maxim, and chosen the shadowy path, fallentis semita vitæ, where the dew lies longest on the grass, and the red rowan berries droop in autumn above the yellow St. John's wort. But you will find her all the fresher for her country ways.