We may now consider this question of the subject-matter and its expression
in words. When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is
endowing the word with life. He has something in his mind, subjected to
his poetic vision, and his problem is to find words that will compel us to
realise the significance of that something. To solve this problem is his
last and most exacting difficulty, demanding a continual wariness and the
closest discipline. When Homer nodded, another man's word came to his lips,
and when that happens the poet may as well be silent. No poet has been
wholly blameless of this relaxation or escaped its penalties, but it is by
his vigilance in this matter that we measure his virility.
I suppose everyone knows the feeling that sometimes calls us to a life
where we fend and cater for ourselves in the fields and rivers, such as
William Morris knew when he shot fieldfares with his bow and arrow and
cooked them for his supper. Shakespeare knew it too, in the mind of
Caliban, and his business was to realise this subject-matter for us in such
a way that it could not possibly escape us in vague generalisation.
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