THERE is general agreement among the critics that so
far the twentieth century is not a great poetic period. The
principal poetic achievement of the first decade was 'The
Dynasts' ( 1904-8) by Thomas Hardy, who continued
his poetic activity up to his death in 1928; Meredith and
Swinburne both survived till 1909, but all these great
names obviously belong to the Victorian era. When Mase-
field succeeded to the Laureateship in 1930, many readers,
even students of English literature, would have been un-
able to say who had occupied the position since the death
of Tennyson in 1892. William Archer in the introduction
to his survey of the 'Poets of the Younger Generation'
( 1902), remarked a "general tendency among cultivated
people to assume that English poetry has of late entered
on a temporary or permanent period of decadence," and
he was so far from denying this assumption that all he
claimed for the thirty-odd writers included in his review
was that they were all "true poets, however small may be
the bulk of their work, however unequal its merit."
Whether they were major or minor poets he left to the
judgment of posterity; and posterity so far has not ven-
tured to promote any one of the 33 to first poetic rank,
though (among those who have died since) the work of
John Davidson ( 1857-1909) and Francis Thompson
( 1859-1907) has stood the test of time. The fact that
the lives of both were made miserable by poverty as well

-292-