by T. S. Eliot
Such language is pure Dryden: it sounds, in Mr. Van Doren’s phrase, “like
a gong.”29 All for Love, from which the lines are taken, is Dryden’s best play, and this is perhaps the highest reach. In general, he is best in his plays
when dealing with situations which do not demand great emotional con-
centration; when his situation is more trivial, and he can practise his art
of making the small great. The back-talk between the Emperor and his
Empress Nourmahal, in Aurungzebe, is admirable purple comedy.
Emperor: Such virtue is the plague of human life:
A virtuous woman, but a cursèd wife.
In vain of pompous chastity y’ are proud:
Virtue’s adultery of the tongue, when loud.
1 8 0
e l i o t ’ s c o n t e m p o r a r y p r o s e
I, with less pain, a prostitute could bear,
Than the shrill sound of virtue, virtue hear.
In unchaste wives—
There’s yet a kind of recompensing ease:
Vice keeps ’em humble, gives ’em care to please:
But against clamorous virtue, what defence?
It stops our mouths, and gives your noise pretence . . .
What can be sweeter than our native home?
Thither for ease, and soft repose, we come;
Home is the sacred refuge of our life:
Secure from all approaches but a wife.
If thence we fly, the cause admits no doubt:
None but an inmate foe could force us out.
Clamours, our privacies uneasy make:
Birds leave their nests disturbed, and beasts their haunts
forsake.30
But drama is a mixed form; pure magnificence will not carry it through.
The poet who attempts to achieve a play by the single force of the word
provokes comparison, however strictly he confine himself to his capacity,
with poets of other gifts. Corneille and Racine do not attain their triumphs
by magnificence of this sort; they have concentration also, and, in the
midst of their phrases, an undisturbed attention to the human soul as
they knew it.31
Nor is Dryden unchallenged in his supreme ability to make the ridicu-
lous, or the trivial, great:
Avez-vous observé que maints cercueils de vieilles
Sont presque aussi petits que celui d’un enfant?32
These lines are the work of a man whose verse is as magnificent as Dry-
den’s, and who could see profounder possibilities in wit, and in violently
joined images, than ever were in Dryden’s mind. For Dryden, with all his
intellect, had a commonplace mind. His powers were, we believe, wider,
but no greater, than Milton’s; he was confined by boundaries as impassable,
though less strait. He bears a curious antithetical resemblance to Swin-
burne. Swinburne was also a master of words, but Swinburne’s words are
j o h n d r y d e n
1 8 1
all suggestions and no denotation; if they suggest nothing, it is because
they suggest too much. Dryden’s words, on the other hand, are precise,
they state immensely, but their suggestiveness is almost nothing.
That short dark passage to a future state;
That melancholy riddle of a breath,
That something, or that nothing, after death.33
is a riddle, but not melancholy enough, in Dryden’s splendid verse. The
question, which has certainly been waiting, may justly be asked: whether
without this which Dryden lacks, poetry can exist? What is man to decide
what poetry is? Dryden’s use of language is not, like that of Swinburne,
weakening and demoralizing. Let us take as a final test his elegy upon
Oldham, which deserves not to be mutilated:
Farewell, too little and too lately known,
Whom I began to think and call my own;
For sure our souls were near allied, and thine
Cast in the same poetic mould with mine.
One common note on either lyre did strike,
And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike.
To the same goal did both our studies drive;
The last set out the soonest did arrive.
Thus Nisus fell upon the slippery place,
Whilst his young friend performed and won the race.
O early ripe! to thy abundant store
What could advancing age have added more?
It might (what nature never gives the young)
Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue.
But satire needs not those, and wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.
A noble error, and but seldom made,
When poets are by too much force betrayed.
Thy generous fruits, though gathered ere their prime,
Still showed a quickness; and maturing time
But mellows what we write to the dull sweets of rhyme.
Once more, hail, and farewell; farewell, thou young,
1 8 2
e l i o t ’ s c o n t e m p o r a r y p r o s e
But ah! too short, Marcellus of our tongue!
Thy brows with ivy and with laurels bound;
But fate and gloomy night encompass thee around.34
From the perfection of such an elegy we cannot detract; the lack of nebula
is compensated by the satisfying completeness of the statement. Dryden
lacked what his master Jonson possessed, a large and unique view of life;
he lacked insight, he lacked profundity. But where Dryden fails to satisfy,
the nineteenth century does not satisfy us either; and where that century
has condemned him, it is itself condemned. In the next revolution of taste
it is possible that poets may turn to the study of Dryden. He remains one
of those who have set standards for English verse which it is desperate to
ignore.
l o n d o n l e t t e r , j u l y 1921 1
t h e v a c a n t t e r m o f wit set in early this year with a fine hot rainless spring; the crop of murders and divorces has been poor compared with
that of last autumn; Justice Darling (comic magistrate) has been silent,
and has only raised his voice to declare that he does not know the di¤er-
ence between Epstein and Einstein (laughter).2 Einstein the Great has vis-
ited England, and delivered lectures to uncomprehending audiences, and
been photographed for the newspapers smiling at Lord Haldane. We won-
der how much that smile implies; but Einstein has not confided its mean-
ing to the press. He has met Mr. Bernard Shaw, but made no public com-
ment on that subject.3 Einstein has taken his place in the newspapers with
the comet, the sun-spots, the poisonous jelly-fish and octopus at Margate,
and other natural phenomena.4 Mr. Robert Lynd has announced that only
two living men have given their names to a school of poetry: King George V
and Mr. J. C. Squire.5 A new form of influenza has been discovered, which
leaves extreme dryness and a bitter taste in the mouth.6
The fine weather and the coal strike have turned a blazing glare on
London, discovering for the first time towers and steeples of an uncontami-
nated white.7 The smile is without gaiety. What is spring without the
Opera? Drury Lane and Covent Garden mourn; the singers have flocked,
we are told, to New York, where such luxuries can be maintained. They
have forgotten thee, O Sion.8 Opera was one of the last reminders of a
1 8 3
1 8 4
e l i o t �
� s c o n t e m p o r a r y p r o s e
former excellence of life, a sustaining symbol even for those who seldom
went. England sits in her weeds: eleven theatres are on the point of closing,
as the public will no longer pay the prices required by the cost.9 Consid-
ering the present state of the stage, there is little direct cause for regret.
An optimist might even aªrm that when everything that is bad and expen-
sive is removed, its place may be supplied by something good and cheap;
on the other hand it is more likely to be supplied by what is called, in the
language of the day, the “super-cinema.” Yet the Everyman Theatre at
Hampstead, formed on a similar ideal to that of the Théâtre du Vieux Co-
lombier in Paris, has, I hear, done well with a season of Shaw plays, though
the performance has been criticized.10 And M. Diaghile¤, who has lately
arrived with his Ballet and Stravinsky, has crowded houses.11 Massine is
not there, but Lopokova is perfection.12 Not yet having had the opportunity
of going, I can say nothing about either of the new ballets, Chout or Cuadro Flamenco. 13 Two years ago M. Diaghile¤’s ballet arrived, the first Russian dancers since the war: we greeted the Good-humoured Ladies, and the Boutique Fantasque, and the Three-Cornered Hat, as the dawn of an art of the theatre.14 And although there has been nothing since that could be called
a further development, the ballet will probably be one of the influences
forming a new drama, if a new drama ever comes. I mean of course the
later ballet which has just been mentioned; for the earlier ballet, if it had
greater dancers—Nijinsky or Pavlowa—had far less significance or sub-
stantiality.15 The later ballet is more sophisticated, but also more simpli-
fied, and simplifies more; and what is needed of art is a simplification of
current life into something rich and strange. This simplification neither
Congreve nor Mr. Shaw attained; and however brilliant their comedies,
they are a divagation from art.16
In this connection, it may be observed that Mr. Gordon Craig has in-
curred abuse by an essay which fills the February number of the Chapbook,
entitled “Puppets and Poets.”17 Mr. Craig’s style of writing, from what one
can judge of it in this essay or series of notes, is certainly deplorable; but
his essay contains a great deal of interest and some sense. He was rebuked
for pointing out that the Puppet is not intended to deceive us into thinking
that it is human, and afterwards praising one of the Japanese figures illus-
trated by saying that “this . . . hand almost seems prepared to shake an-
other hand.” Why, says the critic, this is a contradiction: is the puppet in-
tended to resemble a human being or not? If it is, then it is merely a
l o n d o n l e t t e r , j u l y 19 2 1
1 8 5
substitute for a human being, only tolerable on account of the high price
of actors; if it is not, why should the proximity of the resemblance be a
merit? But Mr. Craig has merely implied what is a necessary condition of
all art: the counter-thrust of strict limitations of form and the expression
of life. Ordinary social drama acknowledges no limitations, except some
tricks of the stage. A form, when it is merely tolerated, becomes an abuse.
Tolerate the stage aside and the soliloquy, and they are intolerable; make
them a strict rule of the game, and they are a support. A new form, like
that of the modern ballet, is as strict as any old one, perhaps stricter. Artists
are constantly impelled to invent new diªculties for themselves; cubism
is not licence, but an attempt to establish order. These reflections pro-
voked by the ballet suggest at any rate a theory that might be maintained
throughout an evening’s conversation.
Mr. Strachey’s Book
Mr. Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria has succeeded and far surpassed Mrs.
Asquith’s book in popularity: it is found at every level; it is discussed by
everyone and is discharged into the suburbs by every lending-library.18 It
would be absurd to say that the vogue of the book is not deserved; equally
absurd to say that it is deserved, since vogue and the merits of a book have
nothing in common. Its popularity is not due to faults, but rather to mer-
its, though partly to the qualities which are not the most important. The
notices which it has had, long and enthusiastic, from every paper, have
been of great interest as an index to the simple and unsuspecting mind
of the reviewer. What is of most interest in the book is Mr. Strachey’s
mind, in his motives for choosing his material, in his method in dealing
with it, in his style, in his peculiar combination of biography and history.
It was evident from Eminent Victorians, and is equally evident from Queen Victoria, that Mr. Strachey has a romantic mind—that he deals, too, with
his personages, not in a spirit of “detachment,” but by attaching himself
to them, tout entier à sa proie attaché. 19 He has his favourites, and these are chosen by his emotion rather than design, by his feeling for what can
be made of them with his great ability to turn the commonplace into some-
thing immense and grotesque. But it must be a peculiar commonplace,
although Mr. Strachey is limited only by the degree of interest he takes
in his personage. There must be a touch of the fantastic, of a fantastic that
lies hidden for Mr. Strachey to discover. Gladstone appears to be without
1 8 6
e l i o t ’ s c o n t e m p o r a r y p r o s e
it; Disraeli appears to be too consciously playing a rôle for Mr. Strachey to extract much fantasy from him.20 What is especially charming is the fusion of irony with romance, of private with public, of trivial and serious.
The fusion is reflected in the style, which, although Mr. Strachey’s, may
be formulated as a mixture of Gibbon with Macaulay—Gibbon in the
irony, and Macaulay in the romance.21 Mr. Strachey, without your being
aware of it, places his sitter in just this light, and with a phrase—“Lord
Melbourne, an autumn rose”—“Mr. Creevey, grown old now,” imposes
his point of view.22 The innocent accept this under the impression that
they are acquiring information. If it were not under the spell of Mr. Stra-
chey’s mind, if we examined the letters of the Queen, or Balmoral, or the
Albert Memorial, or the Crystal Palace, without Mr. Strachey’s directions,
we might see them very di¤erently, and quite as justly. Mr. Strachey never
seems to impose himself, he never drives a hint towards a theory, but he
never relaxes his influence.
Mr. Strachey is a part of history rather than a critic of it; he has in-
vented new sensations from history, as Bergson has invented new sensa-
tions from metaphysics.23 No other historian has so deliberately cultivated
the feelings which the inspection of an historical character can arouse.
The strange, the surprising, is of course essential to art; but art has to cre-
ate a new world, and a new world must have a new structure. Mr. Joyce
has succeeded, because he has very great constructive ability; and it is the
structure which gives his later work its unique and solitary value. There
are several other writers—among the very best that we have—who can
explore feeling—even Mr. Ronald Firbank, who has a sense of beauty in
a very degraded form.24 The craving for the fantastic, for the strange, is
legitimate and perpetual; everyone with a sense of beauty has it. The
strongest, like Mr. Joyce, make their feeling into an articulate external
world; what might crudely be called a more feminine type, when it is also
a very sophisticated type, makes its art by feeling and by contemplating
the feeling, rather than the object which has excited it or the object into
which the feeling might be made. Of this type of writing the recent book
of sketches by Mrs. Woolf, Monday or Tuesday, is the most extreme ex-
ample.25 A good deal of the secret of the charm of Mrs. Woolf’s shorter
pieces consists in the immense disparity between the object and the train
of feeling which it has set in motion. Mrs. Woolf gives you the minutest
datum, and leads you on to explore, quite consciously, the sequence of
l o n d o n l e t t e r , j u l y 19 2 1
1 8 7
images and feelings which float away from it. The result is something
which makes Walter Pater appear an unsophisticated rationalist, and the
writing is often remarkable.26 The book is one of the most curious and in-
teresting examples of a process of dissociation which in that direction, it
would seem, cannot be exceeded.
l o n d o n l e t t e r , s e p t e m b e r 1921 1
l o o k i n g b a c k u p o n t h e past season in London—for no new season
has yet begun—it remains certain Strawinsky was our two months’ lion.
He has been the greatest success since Picasso.2 In London all the stars
obey their seasons, though these seasons no more conform to the almanac
than those which concern the weather. A mysterious law of appearance
and disappearance governs everybody—or at least everybody who is wise
enough to obey it. Who is Mr. Rubinstein? The brilliant pianist.3 This sum-
mer he was everywhere; at every dinner, every party, every week-end; in
the evening crisp and curled in a box; sometimes apparently in several
boxes at once. He was prominent enough to have several doubles; num-
bers of men vaguely resembled him. Why this should have happened this
year rather than last year, perhaps rather than next year, I for one cannot
tell. Even very insignificant people feel the occult influence; one knows,
