Oxford Lectures on Poetry

Abstract

Among critics Professor Bradley holds a place by himself.It is not only that he combines two qualities which are seldom found together, a keen and delicate sense of literary beauty, and a trained mastery of philosophical methods and ideas.It is not even, though this is manifestly true, that he possesses each of these in an uncommonly high degree.It is rather that in his mind the two are absolutely blended into one, that the one works instinctively at the bidding of the other, that each is at every point inter-penetrated by the other.His work therefore differs strangely from that of others who have brought philosophical ideas to bear upon literary criticism.They are apt to be more interested in their philosophy than their literature.They tend to fly off at a tangent, to make their criticism a steppingstone to a moral or metaphysical discourse.Of this tendency there is no trace in Professor Bradley.He never forgets that criticism is the task he has undertaken, and that, having undertaken it, he cannot fairly leap over the bounds which it manifestly lays down.He has to interpret a given poem; to explain its bearing upon the poet's vision of things as a whole; to explore the poet's spirit, as reflected in the more inspired and therefore the more characteristic portion of his work; to trace his character and his general attitude towards life and all that life offers to him or demands of him; to ask what are the imaginative experiences summed up in certain familiar words-' the sublime' is the instance taken in this volume-or implied in certain forms of imaginative art.This is what he sets himself to do, and not to use the poem, the poet, or the imaginative experience as a mere peg on which to hang an 'Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences,' or even a 'Critique of Judgment, Practical and Imaginative.'But if Professor Bradley has the courage to shut the door against philosophy as a 'thing in itself,' he makes amends by opening it, and opening it wide, to her as the handmaid of criticism.And it is significant that the subjects which form the bulk of this volume-even the lecture on 'The Letters of Keats' may fairly be included-are such as lend themselves with peculiar readiness to this treatment.Wordsworth, Shelley, the' Long Poem in the Age of Wordsworth,' were saturated with reflection, with ideas 15 M. L. R. VI.