OF THIS TIME, OF THAT PLACE
79
values. He was not without wit, he had great knowledge and con·
siderable taste and even in the full movement of the "new" litera–
ture he had won a certain respect for his refusal to accept it.
In France, even in England, he would have been connected with
a more robust tradition of conservatism, but America gave him
an audience not much better than genteel. It was known in the
college that to the subsidy of
Life
and
Letters
the Bradbys con–
tributed a great part.
As
Howe read, he saw that he was involved in nothing less
than an event. When the Fifth Series of
Studies in Order
and
Value
came to be collected, this latest of Frederic Woolley's
essays would not be merely another step in the old direction.
Clearly and unmistakably, it was a turning point. All his literary
life Woolley had been cof\cerned with the relation of literature
to mortality, religion and the private and delicate pieties and he
had been unalterably opposed to all that he had called "inhuman
humanitarianism." But here, suddenly, dramatically late, he had
made an about-face, turning to the public life and to the humani–
tarian politics he had so long despised. This was the kind of inci–
dent the histories of literature make much of. Frederick Woolley
was opening for himself a new career and winning a kind of new
youth. He contrasted the two poets, Thomas Wormser who was
admirable, Joseph Howe who was· almost dangerous. He spoke
of the "precious subjectivism" of Howe's verse. "In times like
ours," he wrote, "with millions facing penury and want, one feels
that the qualities of the
tour d'ivoire
are well-nigh inhuman, nearly
insulting. The
tour d'ivoire
becomes the
tour d'ivresse
and it is
not self-intoxicated poets that our people need." The essay said
more: "The problem is one of meaning. I am not ignorant that
the creed of the esoteric poets declares that a poem does not and
should not
mean
anything, that it
is
something. But poetry is
what the poet makes it, and if he is a true poet he makes what
his society needs. And what is needed now is the traditien in
which Mr. Wormser writes, the true traditign of poetry. The
Howes do no harm, but they do no good when positive good is
demanded of all responsible men. Or do the Howes indeed do
no harm? Perhaps Plato would have said they do, that in some
ways theirs is the Phrygian music that turns men's minds from
the struggle. Certainly it is true that Thomas Wormser writes in
the lucid Dorian mode which sends men into battle with evil."
