Tacit Pledges

Abstract

This is perhaps the wrong kind of essay for a centennial symposium. If it honours the work of Housman — and I hope that it does — it does so obliquely and in accordance with the terms of my epigraph which I take, not from Housman, but from F. H. Bradley.¹ My main concern here is with matters of style: with particulars of syntax, rhythm and cadence, and with the problems of pitch. Considered in its negative aspect, a writer’s style is what he or she is left with after the various contingent forces of attrition have taken their toll. Considered more positively, style marks the success an author may have in forging a personal utterance between the hammer of self-being and the anvil of those impersonal forces that a given time possesses. Hammer and anvil together distort as well as shape. None of this, I agree, bears much resemblance to Housman’s own description of making, as given in the 1933 Leslie Stephen Lecture, The Name and Nature of Poetry. It does bear some resemblance, however, to isolated observations found variously in Housman’s correspondence and scholarly and critical writings: ‘What Balfour did in his premiership was to prevent Chamberlain from quite ruining the party.

It is no mere extravagance when a poet talks of a nation’s soul. It is the objective mind which is subjective and self-conscious in its citizens: it feels and knows itself in the heart of each.