of any such spiritual cause as Mr. Browning seems inclined to assign it. Like Ezekiel picturing the ideal future of Israel under the figure of national clanship, the true clan poet socialises everything he touches. He knows nothing of personal introspection. His theme is not self, but the group of kinsmen to which he belongs; if he sing of any hero, the whole body of clansmen share the eulogy; in short, his poetical pictures are rather of men in groups than of individuals. We must not, therefore, expect "personal" poetry in the modern sense from the clan.
But neither must we suppose that the clan age knows no personal poetry of its own, or that such poetry is less real than ours because it is conceived from a totally different standpoint. Sentiments and emotions are not, indeed, conceived as the peculiar property of the individual; they are projected outwards like visible threads uniting the clansmen in a common objective existence. But they possess on this very account a peculiar vividness which the poetry of individual reflection fails to reach. There is an intensity in clan affections, in clan hatreds, which, compared with the passions of individualised life, stands out like the figures in relief on the Arc de Triomphe contrasted with the flat surface of a painting;
"Sibb aefre ne maeg
Wiht onwendan þám þe wel þenceð."[1]
It is only by remembering this objectiveness of early personality and the social conditions it denotes that we shall solve an apparent paradox in the development of civilisation and literature. The barbarians, says M. Guizot, introduced into the modern world the sentiment
- ↑ "Naught can alter ties of kinship
In the man who thinks aright."(Beowulf, 2600–1.)
