pattern of tea-cups, and the peeping of clocked stockings under farthingales. While the rouge

on the cheek of modern love betrays itself to the languid yet keen eyes of Alfred de Musset, Robert Browning is proclaiming the depths of tender beauty underlying modern love and its rouge; each is a Seer, and each is true, only one sees a truth beyond the other's truth. After Wordsworth has penetrated with solemn-sounding footfall into the aisle of the Temple, David Gray follows, and utters a faint cry of beautiful yearning as he dies upon the threshold.

One word, in this place, as to the end of Art— poetic art particularly, and the mistaken ideas concerning that end. That end has been described from time immemorial as "pleasure."

art is doubtless pleasant to the taste.

Now,

It may be said, further, that art, even when it uses the most painful machinery, when it chronicles human agony and pictures tears and despair, does so in such a way as to cause a certain enjoyment. But the pleasure thus produced is not the aim, but an accompaniment of the aim, proportioned and regulated by qualities existing in materials ex

tracted from life itself. The aim of all life is accompanied by pleasure, includes pleasure, in the highest sense of that word. The specific aim of art, in its definite purity, is spiritualization; and pleasure results from that aim, because the spiritualization of the materials of life renders them, for subtle reasons connected with the soul, more beautifully and deliciously acceptable to the inner consciousness. Even in very low art we find spiritualization of a kind. But pleasure, as mere pleasure, is produced on every side of us by the simplest and least intricate experiences of existence itself. The woe and hopelessness of the popular creed is that it thoroughly separates art from utility. Pleasure, merely as pleasure, is worthless to beings sent down on earth to seek that euphrasy which purges the vision of the inner eye-beings to whom art was given, not a mere musical accompaniment to a dull drama, but as the toucher of the mysterious chords of inquiry which invest that drama with a grand and divine signification. Nor must we confound the purifying spirit of art with didactic sermonizing and direct moral teaching. The spirit who seizes the

forms of life, and passes their spiritual equivalents into the minds of men on chords of exquisite sen

sation, wears no academic gown, writes no formal treatises in verse. The exquisite sensation is a means, and not an end. It is a consequence of

the divine system on which she works, and she produces it as much for its own sake as Nature creates a butterfly for the sake of the down on its wings.

The lower condition of the aim of art, if I have stated that aim properly, places fresh obstacles in the way of the construction of an exact science of pleasure. What is one man's delight is another man's aversion. One lady enjoys the method of Miss Braddon, while her neighbour even gets beyond George Eliot. Scores of people absorb as much pleasure out of Longfellow as a solitary idealist extracts from Richter. But though pleasure emanates from all works properly called artistic, ranks are apportioned in the Temple of Worthies according to the amount of spiritualization, not according to the amount of pleasure involved. The higher the spiritualization the less the need of direct teaching; the smaller the artist, the more his need to sermonize.

We admit "Lear" to be great art, because it absorbs, in one perfect spiritual form, picturesque, emotional, musical, the amplest and most dramatic elements of human existence. We call the Cenci smaller art, because it spiritualizes elements in themselves horrible and narrow as representing humanity. And we call the amusing "Ingoldsby Legends" no art at all, because their direct aim is pleasure, and they spiritualize no form of life whatever.

Contemporary critics are fond of affirming that art, so far from having any moral purpose, has nothing to do with morality. This is saying in effect that nature has nothing to do with morality. For art is the spiritual representation, the alter ego, of nature; and nothing that is true in nature is false in art. Astronomy as much as morality, concrete experiences as well as abstract ideas, have their place in nature and in art; they are a part of the whole, which has two lives, the lower and the higher, the real and the artistic. An essentially immoral form, a bestiality, a lie, an insincerity, is an outrage in life ;* but it has no

* See après, the paper on "Literary Immortality." We

permanent place in art, because spiritualization is fatal to its very perceptibility. The basest things have their spiritual significance, but their baseness has evaporated when the significance is apparent. The puddle becomes part of the rainbow.

It is necessary to understand these points. clearly; for if pleasure were the end of art, and art had nothing to do with morality, the purport of this volume would be unintelligible.

II. The second essential peculiarity of the Poet is that of emotional assimilation of impressions. Where intellect coerces emotion, by however faint an effort, the result is criticism of life, however exquisite. Where emotion coerces intellect, the result is poetry.

It is not enough, observe, to see vividly. Sir Walter Scott could see as vividly as Keats,but he was incapable of such emotion. Scott, indeed, is the greatest modern writer who may unhesitatingly be described as unpoetic. He was

have modern instances of subjects chosen for artistic treatment, which are abominable and false in nature-e. g. the Sapphic passion.