The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (11.1896)

John Barlas’s Poetry

By Henry S. Salt

ritics of the present phase of democracy in England have


remarked that, whatever else it may have produced, it has
not produced poets. The judgment is only partly true. It is
true that the lines on which the “ social question ” is nowadays
argued are largely scientific ; the battle is one of economics rather
than heroics,land the atmosphere of economics is not inspiriting to
singers. Therefore, as might have been expected, song has not
played anything like the same part in the Socialist as in the
Chartist propaganda, or as in the Irish struggle of the Forties ;
there have been no popular song-writers at all comparable to those
who inspired the enthusiasts of half a century ago. On the other
hand it must be remembered that in democratic poetry, even more
than in other poetry, the really original writers—those who aim
at something beyond an expression of the common sentiments of
their comrades—are apt to be unrecognised, or very slowly recog-
nised, by contemporary opinion ; so that the literature of a social
movement still in course of development may turn out to be more
important than at first sight appears.
For example, at the present time, very few of the “reading
public,” and perhaps not many of the “leading critics” (leading,
in the sense of the blind leading the blind), know anything at all

of