VI
POETRY AND DEMOCRACY
THE suspicion or dislike with which poetry is regarded
by practical people, however unjust or exaggerated,
has its reasons, and has existed in all ages and under all
organisations of society. But in a democracy poetry lies
under another special charge, which if made good against it
would be fatal. It is regarded as the amusement of a
leisured class, as something savouring of an aristocratic so-
ciety. Art and letters as a whole share in this charge, but it
falls on poetry with special force. Some kinds of literature
have an obvious popular interest and make an obvious appeal
to the mass of the nation. Some of the fine arts are applied
directly, like architecture, to the public service, or directly
affect, like music, the sensibility of massed audiences. Others
are excused, rather than approved, because they employ
labour, encourage special industries, and produce tangible
material products. This is not the case with poetry. It
stands or falls on its own merits, in its own inherent virtue.
But poetry is a function of life; and where life is organ-
ised under democratic standards poetry is, or should be, a
function of the democratised nation. Much of the poetry of
the past has been produced by and for a small cultured class.
In aristocratic societies such a class was the pivot and guid-
ing force of the nation; in it the imaginative ideals and the
creative instincts of the whole people were concentrated, or,
so far as they existed elsewhere, were used by it for its own
purposes. The rest of the nation was but the soil out of
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