(ἔκστασις)

not so to be termed; for the science really is what Coleridge, with his never-failing happiness, has called "a fairy tale of nature," and the philosophy, not being reflective but contemplative, is called most truly poetic philosophy. Poetry, says Longinus, always brings us to an ecstacy (ěkoтaσis)—an outgoing or outstanding. In this broad sense it may be said of every man in his station that he is either a poet or a philosopher. Iago is too self-conscious for a poet; he is one of those philosophers called men of the world, a thoroughly selfish sharper, who declares that in following the Moor, he follows but himself. On the other hand, look at Othello. Othello, the hero and the lover, is a poet-entirely under the rule of dreams, and who so far forgets himself as to destroy the very being where (in his own language) he had garnered up his heart. The life of such a one, as Campbell said of Sir Philip Sidney, is poetry done into action; and still more forcibly has this been expressed by Ben Jonson, who, remarkably happy as he was in his epitaphs, both those which he gave and that which he got, perhaps never wrote a finer one than the following on his son, which indeed would be perfect but for peace and piece, one sound with two meanings.

"Rest in soft peace, and, askt, say here doth lye

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."

A child is the very personification of poetry, it is so

unconscious.

The unconsciousness of poetic feeling will further be manifest, if it can be shown that self-consciousness in any form is hurtful to poesy. This will not be difficult. There are three forms in which self-consciousness is most liable to be intruded into a poem, namely, as didactic, as artistic, and as satiric; and none of these can be admitted into a poem without doing much harm.

Take the didactic strain for instance. It is an object with poesy to direct the mind as well as to please. The mind may be directed in two ways; either by precept or by example, either by teaching or by training. The exposition of how, when, and where, as on a map, is teaching; the exercises of a gymnasium constitute training. We see both these methods employed in the services of the Church, in some places the one, and in some the other, being deemed the more important. Sermons are for the most part precept: they expose the anatomy of our own and of other bodies, the arrangements of the different parts, the purposes they fulfil, how they act and how they are acted on; the other services, confession, praise, and prayer, are exercises, a noble running, leaping, and wrestling to fit us for battling with the world and becoming fellow-workers with God. The former is instruction in the theory, the latter is instruction in the practice, of a divine music. Now it is in this latter way that the poet endeavours to influence the mind, trusting in the unconscious power of a sympathy that instinctively leads us to imitate whatever we

can be brought to admire, and stamps upon our souls, for better for worse, the likeness of that which we attempt to imitate; at least, it is in this way that he endeavours to influence the mind by poems of the dramatic and of the lyrical order. Narrative poems are more akin to sermons in the manner of their influence; but it is to be observed that even sermons have the two. methods of influencing. Thus, if the preacher, discoursing about faith, should tell his hearers what it is, and how, and why, and when, and through whom, and by whom, and by what means, it is called into exercise, should proclaim the duty and the rewards of believing, should declare the danger of not believing, and should entreat all by their hopes and by their fears to believe and live, his sermon would be of the preceptive order; but if, on the other hand, without saying a word about that faith to awaken which is the supposed aim of his discourse, he should endeavour by a recital of marvellous Power, Wisdom, and Love to place the object of faith vividly before the mind's eye, expecting it thus to be awakened unaware, and as it were by infection from himself, his sermon would belong to the other, the less conscious order. It is in this way that the narrative poet commonly influences the mind; but when his narrative is didactic, he affects the mind by the former, the conscious, method, as in Sir John Davies' poem on the Immortality of the Soul, and in the Georgics of Virgil. The Georgics are considered

E

as Virgil's most finished performance, yet, with the exception of certain episodes which are nothing to the point, they are seldom read out of school. This of itself may show that the conscious method of instruction is unfit for poesy. Of all kinds of poesy, the didactic is that which is least admired, and, from the foregoing short analysis, it will be seen that, as its very name indicates, it differs from every other kind of poesy by being more self-conscious. It is fair therefore to conclude that this kind of self-consciousness at any rate is harmful to poetic feeling.

It needs not to say, but only as a reminder, that the self-consciousness of the artist as such is also damaging to the poesy in which it appears. There are a hundred ways in which it may thus show itself. In the Lay of the Last Minstrel, for instance, we see the antiquarian memory of the poet ever and anon checking his fancy. Thus in Canto IV. 31,

"I know right well that in their lay,
Full many minstrels sing and say

Such combat should be made on horse."

Then, again (Canto II. 22,) as if half afraid that his story may be too much for the reader's faith, he puts in such a makeweight as the following:

Other examples will be found in Cantos V. 6, V. 13,

poem such

VI. 5. Twice however in the course of the statements come in with very great effect; namely in Canto III. 10,

"Now if you ask who gave the stroke,

I cannot tell, so mot I thrive:

It was not given by man alive;"

and again in Canto VI. at the end of the seventh stanza. But the greatest art is to conceal art. The poet is often to his own hurt tempted to let out the secret of his skill. Wordsworth not seldom allows a glimpse behind the scenes, and one cannot sufficiently wonder at the hardihood with which he allows it in the midst of that splendid picture which contains the following lines:

"The appearance instantaneously disclosed
Was of a mighty palace-boldly say

A wilderness of building."

The school of Boileau, confessedly wanting in genius, has received the praise at least of great art and great taste; yet how clumsy is the art, what can be more tasteless than the art, which directed the French Aristarque, as he is called, to give every the most worthless reading of his various verses! The most laughable instance of this kind is afforded by another Frenchman, Olivier Maillard, who (about 1500) at a time when it was considered graceful for the preachers to cough as they harangued, published a sermon in which he has