There is the same difficulty when we come to literature. What would
Chaucer or Spenser have thought of Browning or Swinburne? Would such
poetry have seemed to them like an inspired product of art, or a
delirious torrent of unintelligible verbiage? Of course, they would not
have understood the language, to begin with; and the thought, the
interfusion of philosophy, the new problems, would have been absolutely
incomprehensible. Probably if one could have questioned Spenser, he
would have felt that the last word had probably been said in poetry,
and would not have been able to conceive of its development in any
direction.
The great genius who is also effective is generally the man who is not
very far ahead of his age, but just a little ahead of it--who foresees
not the remote possibilities of artistic development, but just the
increased amount of colour and quality which the received forms can
bear, and which are consequently likely to be acceptable to people of
artistic perceptions. If a Tennyson had lived in the time of Pope, he
would doubtless have used the heroic couplet faithfully, and put into
it just a small increase of melody, a slightly more graceful play of
thought, a finer observation of natural things--but he probably would
not have strayed beyond the accepted forms of art.
Then there comes in a new and interesting question as to whether it is
possible that any new species of art will be developed, or whether all
the forms of art are more or less in our hands.
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