of the
seventeenth century were styled "the sons of Ben Jonson." There are no
doubt "sons of Tennyson" at this present date. With these we have now no
concern. They are but satellites, while that for which we are scanning
the poetical horizon is a rising star of a magnitude in some degree
comparable with the stars which have set with the deaths of Matthew
Arnold, Browning and Tennyson. There is, I believe, more than one such
star already well advanced into the firmament. I am one of those who
believe that this is an age unusually rich in genuine poetry. There are
to-day singing in the English tongue enough of so-called minor poets to
have made the poetical fortune of any epoch between the Elizabethan
period and our own. This century has seen re-enthroned the Miltonic
doctrine that poetry should be "simple, sensuous, and passionate"; it
has learned from Wordsworth of the divinity in Nature, from Shelley of
the passion in it, from Tennyson how to express its moods; it has
learned from Byron how to be frank about humanity, from Wordsworth how
to sympathize with it, from Browning how to understand it; it has been
taught by Shelley how to write with melody, by Keats how to write with
richness, by Wordsworth with simplicity, by Tennyson with grace and
luminousness, by Arnold with chasteness. It has availed itself of these
great examples to such good purpose that the average of reputable verse
written to-day is more instinct with feeling, more vitalised with
thought, more satisfying in expression, than much which is studied and
belauded and quoted because it was written a century or two ago.

With great boldness perhaps, but with no less deliberateness of
judgment, I maintain that contemporary men and women might better spare
for the living, breathing, and often very beautiful work of their
contemporaries, some of the time and appreciation which they do not
grudge to give over and over again, even if it be with some conscious
effort, to the elaborate conceits of the seventeenth century, to the
rather frigid frugalities of a Gray, the laborious melancholies of a
Collins, or the cold transparencies of a Landor. No doubt justice will
be done in the end, but why not do as much of it as possible at once?

It is for these reasons that I beg your attention to an attempt at an
appreciation of two contemporary singers, both excellent, though
differing in the nature of their excellence. Their names are John
Davidson and William Watson.