of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare, with his "daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty;" it is Wordsworth, with his "Voice . . . heard In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas it is Keats, with his "Moving waters at their priest-like task Of cold ablution round Earth's human shores;" it is Chateaubriand, with his "cîme indéterminée des forêts;" it is Senancour, with his mountain birch-tree: "Cette écorce blanche, lisse et crevassée; cette tige agreste; ces branches qui s'inclinent vers la terre; la mobilité des feuilles, et tout cet abandon, simplicité de la nature, attitude des déserts."'1 And again : 'Poetry is interpretative both by having natural magic in it, and by having moral profundity. In both ways it illuminates man; it gives him a satisfying sense of reality; it reconciles him with himself and the universe. Thus Æschylus's “ δράσαντι παθεῖν” and his “ ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα are alike interpretative. Shakspeare interprets both when he says, "Full many a glorious morning have I seen, and when he says, 1 Ib. I. p. 81. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, These great poets unite in themselves the faculty of both kinds of interpretation, the naturalistic and the moral. But it is observable that in the poets who unite both kinds, the latter (the moral) usually ends by making itself the master. In Shakspeare the two kinds seem wonderfully to balance one another; but even in him the balance leans; his expression tends to become too little sensuous and simple, too much intellectualized.'1 The power of poetry is its interpretative power, the object upon which it works is life, and it follows, therefore, that the test of poetic merit is 'truth.' For this is the sole test by which the possession of this power can be measured. But to poetic truth of substance, in its natural and necessary union with poetic truth of style,' must be added 'the high seriousness which comes from absolute sincerity.' This is the accent which marks supreme poetical success, the accent of the masters. mate. For Matthew Arnold's conception of poetry is not merely a conception, an ideal; it is an actual estiHere, in literature at least, he was able to find that perfection in the pursuit of which he spent his life. If we ask, How can this accent be detected? Where can this perfect poetry be found? he replies, as Addison had done before him, that all lesser poetry must be brought to the touchstone of the masters-Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton. And he himself joyfully recognizes this accent in the very poets whom Plato so grievously misunderstood. For of the Greek poets he writes : No other poets have lived so much by the imaginative reason; no other poets have made their work so well balanced; no other poets, who have so well satisfied the thinking-power, have so well satisfied the religious sense.'' seen. It is in this increased power of appreciation that the development of criticism is most conspicuously We may set on one side Plato's examination of Greek poetry, as nullified by the severity of the ideal tests which he adopted; but how cold and restrained does Aristotle's approval of Sophocles and Homer appear by the side of Addison's enthusiastic recognition of the beauties of Milton. And the difference between the Greek and the modern estimate of poetry becomes still more apparent, when we compare the language of Plato and Aristotle with the familiar, almost caressing, accents which contemporary English authors have taught us to associate with any criticism of poetry. There is Ruskin's assertion of the essential morality which underlies the artist nature, 'All right human song is the finished expression by art, of the joy or grief of noble persons, for right causes'; Arnold's sad promise of the future, 'In poetry our race will find an ever surer and surer stay'; Emerson's quick recognition of its perpetual vitality, 'When the 1 Ib. p. 222. poet sings, the world listens with the assurance that now a secret of God is to be spoken.' And why this change from formal analysis to reverent appreciation? Is it not because the common thought of man has drawn nearer to that finer and more spiritual perception of things which has characterized poetry from the very first? CHAPTER IX THE INTERPRETATIVE POWER OF POETRY-IT INTER PRETS HUMAN ACTION, NATURE, STATES OF MIND, INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE IMITATION, Representation, Interpretation: in these three words we have the history of our conception of poetry. The aims which these words embody are found in all forms of poetry, but they are manifested in varying degrees; and the relative degrees of prominence which they severally attain define broadly certain stages in the growth of poetry, or creative literature, as a whole. To-day the last aim is dominant, and the 'grand power of poetry' is felt to be its 'interpretative power.' After all it is doubtful whether we can obtain a better or clearer perception of the real nature of this interpretative power than we do from Addison. Addison makes the power of poetry and the Fine Arts consist in the appeal to the imagination; makes poetry avail itself of this appeal more than any other art and he points out the twofold use of the faculty of the imagination which is involved in the process. There is not only the working of the imaginative reason in the poet's mind, but there is |