shall bring out all our best
powers, not one only of them or some few of them. At present our system
is all for knowledge. We seek for understanding of facts, but we do not
seek for a systematic view of life, for clear principles of art, or for
social many-sidedness. Of the best elements of the Hebraic spirit, we
are almost ceasing to seek anything at all. And this is wholly bad. We
shall breed up a race not only without what Matthew Arnold calls
distinction, but without any common animating soul, unless it be a
general selfishness and a general Philistinism.

What we want is a broader, less mechanical culture. We want to be
steeped not only in facts, but in stimulating thoughts, religious and
poetical. Splendid culture means splendid ideals, and if a nation could
acquire the clear thinking of Hellenism combined with the immense moral
resolve of Hebraism, that nation, knowing its aims, and making steadily
towards them, would afford a spectacle of grandeur and of power such as
no nation now presents.

The Principles of Criticism
Applied to
Two Successors of Tennyson

It is perhaps hardly necessary to explain that in the words "successors
of Tennyson" I make no reference to an actual or a prospective Poet
Laureate. The position primarily held by Tennyson in his lifetime, and
the only position in which posterity will regard him, is the position of
the poet. That he was the laureate also is no doubt a matter of some
biographical interest, but it is of little further significance. It will
be doing no injustice to the large quantity of agreeable verse-writing
which has been executed by Mr. Alfred Austin if we take it for granted
that his appointment carries the laureateship back to what it was before
Wordsworth and Tennyson lent it the lustre of their names. The laureate
is now, as in the days of Southey, a literary officer in the Queen's
service, chosen, as other officers are wont to be chosen, by the
political powers that be. Our present interest is rather in those who
come after Tennyson as pre-eminent among the free and single-hearted
servants of the Muses.

Again, by his "successors" I mean simply those who come after--those
masters of younger birth who seem most nearly to take his place now that
he is gone--not any avowed disciples, still less servile imitators of
his thought or style. Following upon Homer there was the school of the
Homeridae, or "sons of Homer." A cluster of poets at the beginning