POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
an uninflected language can be written according to rules of order fit for an inflected speech and for that only.
Yet, because he is never florid, one remembers his work, or one thinks of his work in ones memory, as if it Were speech in unruffled order. One does this in spite of his inversion, in spite of the few treasured archaisms, in spite of his "spelling it chaunted."
One thinks that he had read and admired Gautier, or that at least he had derived similar ambitions from some traditional source. One thinks that his poems are in short hard sentences. The reality is that they are full of definite statement. For better or worse they are doctrinal and nearly always dogmatic. He had the blessed habit of knowing his own mind, and this was rare among writers of his decade. In fact, the "nineties" have chiefly gone out because of their muzziness, because of a softness derived, I think, not from books but from impressionist painting. They riot with half decayed fruit.
The impression of Lionel Johnson's verse is that of small slabs of ivory, firmly combined and contrived. There is a constant feeling of neatness, a sense of inherited order. Above all, he respected his art.
From the Elizabethans to Swinburne, through all that vast hiatus, English poetry had been the bear-garden of doctrinaire. It had been the "vehicle" of opinion. For Swinburne it was at least the art of musical wording. For Johnson it was the art of good writing. The last is a rare thing in England.
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