Today I added this section to the Penny's Poetry Pages article on Alfred Austin. It covers the basics, and is therefore much better than nothing. Depending on the discussion, I may add to it in future.

Austin's poetics are more interesting than his poetry.<ref>c.f. Alfred Austin, "The Essentials of Great Poetry" in ''The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose papers on poetry'' (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1967). [Austin (1967)]. Project Gutenberg,
Web, Nov. 2, 2023.</ref>

Austin believed that melodiousness (musicality) and lucidity (clearness of expression) were essential to poetry.

:There must perforce be certain qualities common to all poetry, whether the greatest, the less great, or the[Pg 3] comparatively inferior, and whether descriptive, lyrical, idyllic, reflective, epic, or dramatic; and, so long as there existed any
authority or body of generally accepted opinion on the subject, these were at least two such qualities, viz. melodiousness, whether sweet or sonorous, and lucidity or clearness of expression, to be apprehended, without laborious investigation, by highly
cultured and simple readers alike.<ref>Austin (1967), 2-3.</ref>

:The most generous critic, if he is to be discriminating and just, cannot, let me say again, allow that any verse which is profoundly obscure or utterly unmusical, no matter how intellectual in substance, deserves the appellation of poetry.<ref>Austin (
1967), 7.</ref>

He believed that narrative poetry, whether epic or dramatic, was the highest or greatest form of poetry, and that great poetry must be narrative poetry. On his theory, as I understand it, poetry was about the mind's engagement with the world. According
to him, there are four distinct ways in which a mind engages with the world: (1) perception, (2) emotion, (3) thought, and (4) action. Each stage of engagement is a higher form, in that it emerges from and incorporates those below it. The four classed of
poetry, corresponding to the different stages of engagement, are (1) purely descriptive poetry (such as [[imagism]]), (2) lyric poetry, (3) reflective or philosophical poetry, and finally (4) narrative (epic or dramatic) poetry.

:Never forgetting the essential qualities of melody and lucidity, do we not find that mere descriptive verse, which depends on perception or observation, is the humblest and most elementary form of poetry; that descriptive verse, when suffused with
sentiment,[Pg 10] gains in value and charm; that if, to the foregoing, thought or reflection be superadded, there is a conspicuous rise in dignity, majesty, and relative excellence; and finally, that the employment of these in narrative action, whether
epic or dramatic, carries us on to a stage of supreme excellence which can rarely be predicated of any poetry in which action is absent? If this be so, we have to the successive development of observation, feeling, thought, and action, an exact analogy
or counterpart in (1) Descriptive Poetry; (2) Lyrical Poetry; (3) Reflective Poetry; (4) Epic or Dramatic Poetry; in each of which, melody and lucidity being always present, there is an advance in poetic value over the preceding stage, without the
preceding one being eliminated from its progress.<ref>Austin (1967), 9-10.</ref>

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