Squire, are perhaps best known to American readers. All of the poets mentioned in the foregoing paragraph (with the exception of Noyes) have formed themselves in a loose group called "The Georgians," and an anthology of their best work has appeared every two years since 1913. Masefield, Lascelles Abercrombie and John Drinkwater are also listed among the Georgian poets. When their first collection appeared in March, 1913, Henry Newbolt, a critic as well as poet, wrote: "These younger poets have no temptation to be false. They are not for making something 'pretty,' something up to the standard of professional patterns. . They write as grown men walk, each with his own unconscious stride and gesIn short, they express themselves and seem to steer without an effort between the dangers of innovation and reminiscence." The secret of this success, and for that matter, the success of the greater portion of English poetry, is not an exclusive discovery of the Georgian poets. It is their inheritance, derived from those predecessors who, "from Wordsworth and Coleridge onward, have worked for the assimilation of verse to the manner and accent of natural speech." In its adaptability no less than in its vigor, modern English poetry is true to its period-and its past. ture. This collection is obviously a companion volume to Modern American Poetry, which, in its restricted compass, attempted to act as an introduction to recent native Modern British Poetry covers the same period (from about 1870 to 1920), follows the same chrono verse. χχίν logical scheme, but it is more amplified and goes inte far greater detail than its predecessor. The two volumes, considered together, furnish interesting contrasts; they reveal certain similarities and certain strange differences. Broadly speaking, modern American verse is sharp, vigorously experimental; full of youth and its occasional-and natural-crudities. English verse is smoother, more matured and, molded by centuries of literature, richer in associations and surer in artistry. Where the American output is often rude, extremely varied and uncoördinated (being the expression of partly indigenous, partly naturalized and largely unassimilated ideas, emotions and races), the English product is formulated, precise and, in spite of its fluctuations, true to its past. It goes back to traditions as old as Chaucer (witness the narratives of Masefield and Gibson) or tendencies as classic as Drayton, Herrick and Blake-as in the frank lyrics of A. E. Housman, the artless lyricism of Ralph Hodgson, the naïf wonder of W. H. Davies. And if English poetry may be compared to a broad and luxuriating river (while American poetry might be described as a sudden rush of unconnected mountain torrents, valley streams and city sluices), it will inspiring to observe how its course has been temporarily deflected in the last forty years; how it has swung away from one tendency toward another; and how, for all its bends and twists, it has lost neither its strength nor its nobility. New York City. L. U. |