Chapter II

One reads Mr. Hay’s earlier poems with a thrill of pride. They open
glimpses of unselfish courage and sublime devotion compared with
which the prancing pageantry of Homer afflicts us like the cheap
tinsel of the melodrama.

Such is the serious judgment of a reputable writer living in the capital of the nation. It has a particular reference to “Little Breeches” and “Jim Bludso,” which are not poems at all, but formless blobs of coarse, rank sentimentality in the speech of snuff-rubbers and clay-eaters—the so-called “dialect.” They are no better and could not be worse than the “Hoosier” horrors of Riley and the “barrack-room” afflictions of Kipling. I do not doubt that Hay’s dislike of them and his wish that they might be forgotten incited him to literary silence, whereby we are deprived of the poetry that he might have given us had he remained in the field. There is not a true poet in this country who has not experienced the deep disgust of observing the superior “popularity” of his own worst work. That here and there a few should give up in despair, taking to politics, to business, to any coarse pursuit “understanded of the people,” is natural and not to be condemned. These accept their dreadful fame as a punishment fitting the crime, and promise atonement by resolving to write no more “dialect poetry” while stealing is more honorable and indigence more interesting.

John Hay was a true poet; so is Riley; so is Kipling. In addition to their panderings to peasants all have written well. At their best they stir the blood and thrill the nerves of all who can be trusted to feel because taught to think. Yet the late Charles A. Dana, who for years successfully posed as a judge of poetry, had at last the indiscretion to disclose himself by a specific utterance of his taste: he pronounced Kipling’s “Gunga Din” one of the greatest of English poems! After that there was no more to say about Dana, but Dana had not the reticence to say it. Poetry, like any other art, is a matter of manner. If the manner is that of a clown the matter will not redeem it, but, as the dyer’s hand is “subdued to what it works in,” will itself be smirched by its environment. English of the cornfield and the slum is suited to certain kinds of humor and in moderation may itself be amusing, but it has no place in serious or sentimental composition, either verse or prose. Persons writing it confess their peasant understandings, and those who like “dialect poems” like them because they do not know any better than to like them, and that’s all there is to it.

The prose writer whom I have quoted probably does know better, but prefers to march with the procession. Since he mentions Homer and Tennyson (to affirm the greater glory of the author of “Little Breeches” and “Jim Bludso”), perhaps he will permit himself to be asked if he sees no “unselfish courage” in Hector?—no “sublime devotion” in Penelope?—none in Enid?—nothing magnanimous in Arthur’s tenderness to Guinevere? Does he think these noble qualities would shine with a diviner light in the character of a corn-fed lout of the stables, a whiskey-sodden riverman or a slattern of the slums?

The higher virtues are not a discovery of yesterday; they were known as long ago as last week; and some of us who affect an acquaintance with antiquity profess to have found traces of them in the poetry of an even earlier period, before all men began to be born equal. In “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome” there were singing pigs, as there are to-day, and doubtless they had their special wallows with mud of a particular brew; but they were not permitted to thrust their untidy muzzles into the sweet water of the Pierian Spring, turn it into slime and scatter plenty of it o’er a smiling land. It has remained for the “fierce democracies” of the Brand-New World to impose upon letters the law of the Dominion of Dirt.

The leader of the New Movement is indubitably Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, and here is an example of his work. It is called “His Pa’s Romance,” and these two passages are quoted with effusion by one of the “critics”:

Elsie lisps so, she can’t say
Her own name, ist any way
She says ‘Elthy’—like they wuz
Feathers on her words, an’ they
Ist stuck on her tongue like fuzz.

How charming!—it affects the sensibilities like the ripple of a rill of buttermilk falling into a pig-trough. “Ist,” by the way, means (to an idiot) “just”—it is not easy to say why. Here followeth the other inspiring passage:

One time
Elsie start to say the rhyme
“Thing a thong o’ thixpenth”—whee!
I ist yell; an’ ma say I’m
Unpolite as I can be.

If this is not poetry, what kind of an abysmal imbecility has it the characteristic distinction to be? Mr. Riley turns off this stuff by the linear mile, it is received with enthusiasm and reviewed with acclamation by nearly every “literary critic” in America, and the peasants whose taste they share and ignorance reflect are generous enough to give him a living. Think not, observer from another land, whose eye may chance to note these lines, that all these “dialect poets” wear smocks and toil in the fields; it is the peculiar glory of this great country that its peasants wear as good clothing, pursue as high vocations and talk as glibly about art and literature as anybody. Say not in your lack of light that the American gentleman has boorish taste; say, rather, that the American boor has visible signs of the prosperity of a gentleman, and to an alien eye is not readily distinguishable from his betters.