[213] THE "aesthetic" poetry is neither a mere reproduction of Greekor medieval poetry, nor only an idealisation of modern life andsentiment. The atmosphere on which its effect depends belongs to nosimple form of poetry, no actual form of life. Greek poetry,medieval or modern poetry, projects, above the realities of its time,a world in which the forms of things are transfigured. Of thattransfigured world this new poetry takes possession, and sublimatesbeyond it another still fainter and more spectral, which is literallyan artificial or "earthly paradise." It is a finer ideal, extractedfrom what in relation to any actual world is already an ideal. Likesome strange second flowering after date, it renews on a moredelicate type the poetry of a past age, but must not be confoundedwith it. The secret of the enjoyment of it is that inversion ofhome-sickness known to some, that incurable thirst for the sense ofescape, which no actual form of life [214] satisfies, no poetry even,if it be merely simple and spontaneous.
The writings of the "romantic school," of which the aesthetic poetryis an afterthought, mark a transition not so much from the pagan tothe medieval ideal, as from a lower to a higher degree of passion inliterature. The end of the eighteenth century, swept by vastdisturbing currents, experienced an excitement of spirit of which onenote was a reaction against an outworn classicism severed not morefrom nature than from the genuine motives of ancient art; and areturn to true Hellenism was as much a part of this reaction as thesudden preoccupation with things medieval. The medieval tendency isin Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen, the Hellenic in his Iphigenie.At first this medievalism was superficial, or at least external.Adventure, romance in the frankest sense, grotesque individualism—thatis one element in medieval poetry, and with it alone Scott andGoethe dealt. Beyond them were the two other elements of themedieval spirit: its mystic religion at its apex in Dante and SaintLouis, and its mystic passion, passing here and there into the greatromantic loves of rebellious flesh, of Lancelot and Abelard. Thatstricter, imaginative medievalism which re-creates the mind of theMiddle Age, so that the form, the presentment grows outward [215]from within, came later with Victor Hugo in France, with Heine inGermany.
In the Defence of Guenevere: and Other Poems, published by Mr.William Morris now many years ago, the first typical specimen ofaesthetic poetry, we have a refinement upon this later, profoundermedievalism. The poem which gives its name to the volume is a thingtormented and awry with passion, like the body of Guenevere defendingherself from the charge of adultery, and the accent falls in strange,unwonted places with the effect of a great cry. In truth theseArthurian legends, in their origin prior to Christianity, yield alltheir sweetness only in a Christian atmosphere. What ischaracteristic in them is the strange suggestion of a deliberatechoice between Christ and a rival lover. That religion, monasticreligion at any rate, has its sensuous side, a dangerously sensuousside, has been often seen: it is the experience of Rousseau as wellas of the Christian mystics. The Christianity of the Middle Age madeway among a people whose loss was in the life of the senses partly byits aesthetic beauty, a thing so profoundly felt by the Latinhymn-writers, who for one moral or spiritual sentiment have a hundredsensuous images. And so in those imaginative loves, in their highestexpression, the Provencal poetry, it is a rival religion with a [216]new