statue, a material representation. This means that symbolism has come to our aid; that just as in hieroglyphics a lion may stand for fire, so we allow a word representing some sensible object to stand for an idea that is conceivable by the mind, but which has never been presented to our senses.

This is the most important step that we have yet taken towards tracing the development of language into that wonderful medium of transmitting our loftiest, most subtle, and seemingly most inexpressible thoughts, our most illimitable imaginations and divinest aspirations,-a power that of all others the poct possesses.

In thus briefly sketching the development of language and letters my object has been to direct attention to certain powers of the mind, and certain corresponding methods by which we are enabled to communicate with one another.

Although it is not my purpose to formulate these thoughts too rigidly, nor to bind myself down to a systematic and logical elaboration of the question (for in striving after the form one is apt to lose what is of far greater importance), yet it may be well, once for all, to define, with an accuracy sufficient for my purpose, these powers and methods; and I trust that what I have yet to say on the subject of art and poetic literature may prove that these definitions are not groundless.

First, we have seen that there exists a directly

pictorial, or imitative, method. In this the senses enable us to apprehend, and the understanding to classify, or comprehend, the depicted object. All that is merely imitative or delusive in art is effected by this method.

We

Secondly, there is the symbolic method. possess the power of accepting and using a certain. sign (not necessarily pictorial) as representing a certain material object or finite feeling. This power of symbolism is, to some extent at least, also possessed by the brutes. In art all allegory and pathos (as merely such) are results of this power.

Thirdly, there is what I would call the poetic,* or metaphorical, method, which is in fact an extension of the symbolic method by means of a power especially distinctive of humanity. This power is the higher Reason, by which we are conscious of ideal truth; and this ideal truth we are capable of accepting and communicating by means of symbols. All true existence, in whatever form, is due to the presence of this ideal truth; and the only true products of art, as I hope to show more clearly hereafter, are creations, or "entireties," dependent for their real existence on the idea which they symbolize.

It will be necessary now for me to state, as clearly as I can, what I mean by this "ideal truth."

We have all heard of the man Sanderson, who,

* Here I use "poetic" not only in its creative but in its receptive

sense.

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having been blind from his birth, formed a conception of a colour, not as a colour, but as a sound— comparing red to the sound of a trumpet. It is said that another, a deaf mute named Massieu, reversed the process, and compared a trumpet note to a red colour.* Who also does not know how music can excite an idea unconnected with musical soundssuch as moonlight, such as a rising sun?

And yet, what is there in red that is like the blast of a trumpet? What in Beethoven's and Haydn's music like moonlight or sunlight? Nothing in these things themselves. It is because behind all these lights and sounds there is an ideal world, of which they are but the appearances, the sensible representations, and we recognize the same idea in such different forms. And if I may here anticipate what I hope to insist upon more fully afterwards, it is this world of ideas in which the man of letters, and more especially the poet, must dwell, using, by direct representations and by imaginative combinations, the exterior material world of appearances as his language in order to reveal to us what Goethe calls the " open secret of nature;" "breathing forth as best he can," to use Carlyle's words, "the inspired soul of him."

This doctrine of appearances—of an outer material sensible world which exists merely as a manifestation of an "inner sphere of realities," is one which, more or less plainly stated or inferred, is to be found in

* Cf. Soph. Ο. Τ., παιὰν δὲ λάμπει.

much of that literature of which I desire to treat, and in all that literature which merits the name of "poetic." I do not mean to say that it is expressly stated as a formal doctrine, or that it is brought before the reader in any defined theory, or parable, or other form. But, whether or not the writer presents it, or himself conceives it, formally, it underlies all that which is best and truest in literature.

And indeed it is difficult to present the thing formally. To do so one is obliged to use a parable or allegory. The fiction under which the great ideal philosopher Plato offers it is the following.

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He likens the soul before birth to a charioteer and two winged horses. One horse represents the evil passions, the other our nobler affections. by Zeus and all the gods the chariot-souls, with clashing of wheels and the plunging of foaming steeds, circle round the dome of the sky, striving upwards toward the apse of heaven. And those who, conquering the stubborn resistance of the evilpassioned horse, reach that upper sphere gaze on the forms of divine ideas, or essences of things visible to the soul alone. They, dropping down

once more to earth, assume an earthly body" and become men: whereas those who are not able to reach the upper sphere, but circle in vain around the dome of the lower world, when they touch the earth, take the forms of animals. Now, when the human soul, clothed in its earthly vesture of the senses,

perceives anything on earth that is a material reflection (and all things on earth are such) of the heavenly idea, he is reminded of the celestial perfection, and he worships and adores the divinity symbolized by the idol that his senses perceive: he recognizes a divine message in the voice of nature; to him these things of earth are nothing but the form in which truth is presented to him-the shadows or reflections of that which truly exists. Such a man is the poet he that knows this mystery and cannot reveal it to his fellow-man, is the uncreative and unrecognized poet; he that both knows it and can reveal it, who has both the vision and the faculty divine, is the complete and recognized poet.

Let me now recall to your memories some wellknown lines of Wordsworth, which almost rival Plato's vision in imaginative sublimity :

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting :
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar :

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home.

...

The youth, who daily further from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day. .