A Renegade Poet Author:Francis Thompson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3THE WAY OF IMPERFECTION OVID, with the possible exception of Catullus, is the most modern-minded of Latin poets. It is therefore with delight that we first encounter his dictum, so esse... more »ntially modern, so opposed to the aesthetic feeling of the ancient world, textit{decentiorem esse faciem in qua aliquis luevus esset. It was a dictum borne out by his own practice, a practice at heart essentially romantic rather than classic; and there can therefore be little wonder that the saying was scouted by his contemporaries as an eccentricity of genius. The dominant cult of classicism was the worship of perfection, and the Goth was its iconoclast. Then at length literature reposed in the beneficent and quickening shadow of imperfection, which gave us for consummate product Shakespeare, in whom greatness and imperfection reached their height. Since him, however, there has been a gradual decline from imperfection. Milton, at his most typical, was far too perfect; Pope was ruined by his quest for the quality; and if Dryden partially escaped, it was because of the rich faultiness with which Nature had endowed him. The stand made by the poets of the early part of this century was only temporarily successful; and now, we suppose, no thoughtful person can contemplate without alarm the hold which the renascent principle has gained over the contemporary mind. Unless some voice be raised in timely protest, we feel that English art (in its widest sense) must soon dwindle to the extinction of unendurable excellence. The elementary truth of Ovid's maxim it is scarcely requisite to uphold. We have yet to see the perfect faces that are one half so attractive as the imperfect faces. Can any reader tolerate the novelistic her"oine with the Greek features and the exquisitely chiselled nose ? The hero invariably marries her instea...« less