Chapter 11Appendix II

for the purpose for which these essays were put together, his criticism has one great fault, — there is too little of it. The first part deals with four contemporary poets, three of them of the first importance, and a group; the second deals with five recent poets and a dramatist and of these writers three again are of the first importance; but this slender volume of 135 pages is a small pedestal for so many figures. To catch the eye of the Indian reader [he tries] to give the greater of these something like life size, while putting the rest in smaller proportions — after a convention familiar to Indian art. Each essay is indeed excellent in itself; that on Emerson is a masterpiece of fullness in brevity, for it says perfectly in a few pages all that need be said about Emerson the poet and nothing that need not be said; others are quite full and conclusive enough for their purpose, for instance the admirable “defence” of Alfred Austin; and in all the essential things are said and said finely and tellingly. There is quite enough for the experienced reader of English poetry who can seize on implications and follow out suggestions; but the Indian reader is inexperienced and has not ordinarily a well- cultivated critical faculty or receptiveness; he needs an ampler treatment to familiarise him with the subject and secure his permanent interest. The essays do act admirably as finger-posts; but finger-posts are not enough for him, he needs to be carried some miles along the road before he will consent to follow it. APPENDIX II The poetry of the future will be unlike that of the past in one very important circumstance that in whatever languages it may be written, it will be more and more moved by the common mind and motives of all the human peoples. Mankind is now being drawn to a fundamental unity of thought and culture among all its racial and national differences to which there has been no parallel