Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

40 CRITICISM AND CREATION. [ll.
history, and considering our present mental condition,
there is good reason to believe that our creative, poetic
energy has worked itself out, that our Alexandrian era
has come.
This rather depressing view of our poetical situation,
as though it were the time of Alexandrian decadence,
may perhaps seem to receive some countenance from an
opinion put forth with much force by a living voice,
which most Oxford men have probably heard, and
which all are glad to hear — my friend and my fore-
runner in this chair, which he so greatly adorned. Mr.
Arnold is never so welcome as when he speaks of poetry
and literature. Even when we may not agree with all
he says, his words instruct and delight us ; for every
word he speaks on these subjects is living, based on
large knowledge, and on a high standard of excellence.
It must not therefore be supposed that I wish to
engage in controversy with my friend, but rather to
enter into a friendly conversation with him on subjects
interesting to both of us, if I first remind you of his
view, and then try to supplement what he has said by
some other considerations which, in his zeal for a larger,
more enlightened knowledge, he has perhaps left un-
expressed.
He holds that the one work to which we are at
present called, both in poetry and in all literature, is
the work of a better, higher, more world-wide criticism,
than any we have as yet known in England. And by