THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY ON ENGLISH I. POETRY. INTRODUCTION. Of all the forces that may influence poetry that of a past philosophy is the most difficult to estimate. The influence of metrical tradition, of native or foreign literary forms, of the great classics of the past, is comparatively easy to discern. It is somewhat harder to trace the effects of that intangible entity called "contemporary taste": but poetry is the creator as well as the creature of taste, and a broad survey of a whole period's literature will reveal the one in the other. But the influence of philosophy is generically different; it is a question, so to say, for the metaphysics rather than the physics of poetry. To estimate it adequately we have to regard poetry itself from the philosophical standpoint: we have to consider it no longer as a traditional form of artistic exercise, but rather as a means by which man expresses his feelings towards the deeper realities. Poetry, religion and philosophy all deal in part with the supersensible or supernatural-with something beyond the ordinary world as revealed to the first consciousness. It is this element which makes a poetic description differ from a literal reproduction, or a picture from a photograph. Hence, to relate poetry to philosophy we have to regard both as functions of that thought or spirit in man, which reaches beyond the sensible and material world to a deeper reality underlying it. It is this which makes it difficult to estimate the influence of the philosophy of one age and nation on the poetry of another for this thought or spirit in its manifestations eludes local and temporal limitations; indeed the categories of material science are altogether inapplicable to it. Its history is not like the history of science, a record of continuous growth by aggregation, errors being cast away and forgotten, and truth added to truth: error and truth are alike important to it, or 292148 A 2 rather, the terms take on a new meaning. Thought is an organic growth, continually absorbing alien elements and making them part of itself, and containing in itself, so to speak, its whole past. We cannot isolate Greek philosophy from the body of modern thought, any more than we can isolate the acorn from the oak. It is thus clear at the outset that a full treatment of the subject would carry us far beyond the assigned limits. In the first place, we should need a complete history of thought in all its manifestations, embracing religion and philosophy as well as poetry. Secondly, we should have to show in each age how poetry was, in part at least, an expression of this thought. Thirdly, we should have to trace throughout the ways in which the old movements of Greek thought were repeated in aftertimes. To attempt this task at length is useless; to attempt it in outline would be unjust to poetry; we should need, for example, to pass lightly over ages when song flourished, to linger perhaps on a songless century of religious or philosophic development. The most that we can do is to point occasionally in the history of English poetry to the thought that lay behind it, to trace here and there the elements of Greek philosophy living again in it, and to avoid, where possible, the dangers of facile generalization. On the strictly metaphysical side, then, our problem can only be briefly and inadequately treated. But in some other ways it comes within the physics of poetry; and here our task is easier. Greek philosophy, in its form as an ancient classic, exercised an influence in common with the other ancient classics. Hence we find in English poetry many reminiscences of the actual works of Greek philosophers, and of these we must take notice. We may roughly divide them into two classes. In the first come the stray references to ancient philosophy, such as the cosmological excerpts from Plato and Aristotle, which have often formed part of the poet's stock-intrade of literary ornament. The second class is more important. At various times in English poetry actual doctrines or systems of the Greek philosophers have been taken over by our poets and formed into a kind of semi-poetic philosophy, more a literary cult than a spiritual creed. We may note especially two doctrines of Plato: that of åváμvnois and the prenatal existence of the soul, and the doctrine of Eros in the Symposium and Phaedrus, which helped to form the curious and interesting belief known as Italian Platonism. Of the actual philosophy of poetry we need take little note. Aristotle's Poetics undoubtedly formed the basis of all subsequent aesthetic but English poets, though often conversant with orthodox criticism, were, as a whole, little influenced by the precepts and canons which wrought such havoc at times in Continental literature. Finally, we come to a point in English literature where Greek philosophy has ceased to be an influence and has become a study. In this, as in other spheres, the nineteenth century began to win its freedom by perfect comprehension, by the self-consciousness of thought. At this point too begins what was impossible before-the reinterpretation of Greek life and philosophy in the light of the "historical imagination." Such then, in outline, is our task. Dividing English poetry for convenience into four periods, we shall endeavour to trace in each both the primary influences of Greek philosophy as manifested in the thought of the age as it appears in poetry, and, also, the secondary iufluences, the systems based on the Greek philosophers, the references to their works, the traces of conscious aesthetic criticism. To sum up briefly in anticipation, we may say that the tangible influence of Greek philosophy on our poetry was, on the whole, small, the intangible very great. In the general history of thought it is impossible to overestimate the debt of the modern world to the Greeks. But the secondary influences rarely penetrated beneath the surface of English poetry. In that wonderful body of verse we may well claim to find the epitome of our national life-the continuity which disdains external shocks, the vitality which again and again arises from the ashes of decay, above all the spontaneity and freshness which are the well-spring of poetry. Such a living body can hardly be said to be influenced from without rather it absorbs external elements and makes them its own. And, where we find traces of such influence, we may say that the mould is alien, but the clay is English, and the fire. II. -1500. For the purposes of this essay the earlier ages of English poetry may be lightly passed over. Poetry must attain mastery over its material conditions-language, prosody, and metre-before it can rise above the accidental; and the formative process is of necessity long and arduous. Further, philosophy, though curiously vigorous in these isles in the |