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When we hear poetry or music, our very soul is altered; and he who is affected with joy or grief by the imitation of any objects is in very nearly the same situation as if he was affected by the objects themselves." "It is necessary that the poet should form the plots and elaborate his diction in such a manner that he may as much as possible place the thing before his own eyes.

2

17. The view of Horace.-So Horace: "It is not enough," says he, "that poems be beautiful; let them be tender and affecting, and bear away the soul of the auditor whithersoever they please. As the human countenance smiles on those that smile, so does it sympathise with those that weep. If you would have me weep, you must first express the passion of grief yourself," and

so on.

18. The view of Cervantes.-Cervantes explicitly teaches the same doctrine. To the story-teller he declares : Nothing but pure nature is your business; her you must consult, and the closer you can imitate, your picture is the better." 4

19. Of Dr Johnson.-Dr Johnson wrote: "We first discard absurdity and impossibility; then exact greater and greater degrees of probability; but at last become cold and insensible to the charms of falsehood, however specious; and from the imitations of truth, which are never perfect, transfer our attention to truth itself." 5 "Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature." 6 By most dramatists "probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved."

20. Of Cowley.-Cowley says that "Truth is

1 'Politics,' Bk. viii. chap. 5.

5

6

3 Art of Poetry.' See also Aristotle,
Preface to Don Quixote.'
Ib., Vol. v. p. 99.

2 'Poetics,' chap. xvii.

'Poetics,' chap. xiv. 1. Works,' Vol. ii. p. 140. Ib., pp. 100-1.

truest poesy "1; in other words, there is more poetry in fact than in fiction.

21. Of Pope.-Pope, paraphrasing Horace, gives expression to the same doctrine in a very vigorous

manner :

"Let me for once presume to instruct the times,
To know the poet from the man of rhymes.
'Tis he who gives my heart a thousand pains,
Can make me feel each passion that he feigns;
Enrage, compose, with more than magic art;
With pity and with terror tear my heart;
Or snatch me o'er the earth or through the air,
To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where." 2

Thus Pope, too, was a realist. As I hope to show later on, it is only the author essentially true to Nature who can produce the effects which the passage demands.

22. Of James Thomson.-In his fine poem of Spring, James Thomson, without having any theory in view, sets forth the same doctrine as Pope. Where shall I find words, he exclaims

"Tinged with so many colours, and whose power
To life approaching, may perfume my lays
With that fine oil, those aromatic gales

Which, unexhaustive, flow continual round.”

Here is the doctrine of Realism in Poetry clearly, if undesignedly, taught a long hundred years before all the Nineteenth Century din and babble about it. And not only is this Realism implicitly taught, but, as I shall have occasion to show, nobly exemplified long before the days of Scott, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.

23. Of Coleridge.-Coleridge himself said: "The great source of bad writing is a desire in the writers to be thought something more than men of sense. Language is made a sort of leap-frog.

1 'Davideis,' Bk. i.

2 Cf. Horace, 'Epistles,' Bk. ii. 1, and 'The Art of Poetry.'

Our poetry runs after something more than human, and prose runs after our poetry, and even our conversation follows in the pursuit. Metaphors are used not to illustrate but as substitutes for plain speaking. Sound sense and sound feeling are necessary to a good writer." 1 Admirable remarks; but alas! some of our poets and critics (e.g., Macaulay and Swinburne, as we have seen) appear to have a kind of notion that poetry consists in not being sensible!

From the quotations given it would appear to be unquestionable that many of the great masters, at least, are convinced that Realism is the right thing both in Poetry and Art. We have the more reason to come to this conclusion, because in the passages quoted some of them are expressing themselves without reference to any preconceived theory, and, consequently, unperverted, unbiassed by preconceptions or by prejudices of any kind. Generally speaking, the great Poets are the best Philosophers, having no theory to support.

24. There is a general conviction that truth to Nature is requisite.-Coming down to our own time, there is now a general, though not very well defined, conviction that truth to Nature is desirable in Literature and Art. Critical literature abounds with such words and phrases as necessarily involve this conclusion-such words as vitality, actuality, verisimilitude, passion, inwardness, and so forth; such phrases as "palpitating with actuality, drawn to the life,' throbbing with vitality," inconsistencies so harmonised as to make the character seem real and possible," "convincing natural vigour," "instinct with truth, so near to life and so convincing that the artist himself is never in view," thrilling sense of reality," and the like. An able critic in The

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1 See 'Athenæum,' 1889, Vol. i. p. 386.

I

Athenæum' holds that "the final distinction between poets of the first and poets of the second class is this that while the poetry whose air is the highest Heaven of the imagination seems no longer to be literature at all, but the very voice of Nature herself, the poetry that dwells in the lower spheres may give us perhaps the voice of Nature, but gives it as through a telephone." 1 And Professor Saintsbury thus expresses himself on Carlyle's' French Revolution': "The 'French Revolution' of Carlyle is the French Revolution as it happened, as it was; the French Revolution of the others is the French Revolution dug up in lifeless fragments by excellent persons with the newest pickaxes." 2 In short, an essential Realism seems to be the implicit creed of man, woman, and child (notice how children insist upon it in their play) as long as they remain unconscious of creed and unsophisticated; as long as they keep themselves outside the influence of schools and coteries and esoteric societies; as long, indeed, as they themselves are frank and true to Nature.

24a. Nor does there seem to be any sound distinction between the Romantic and the Classic.-Again, there is a great deal of vague talk about "the romantic" and "the classic," but I am bound to confess that I do not clearly apprehend what is meant by those terms. Collier says: "It is the disregard of the trammels of the unities that constitutes the 'romantic' drama, whether the story be real or fictitious; and that from the earliest period to the time of Shakespeare, there is not a play in our language in which they are strictly observed. The words 'romantic drama have reference to form and construction merely, and do not in any respect relate to sentiment and

1 'Athenæum,' February 1887, p. 247.

2 'Corrected Impressions.' Cf. note above, p. 116.

language." 1 On the other hand, Goethe says: "I call the classic healthy; the romantic, sickly. In this respect the 'Nibelungenlied' is as classic as 'The Iliad,' for both are vigorous and healthy. Most modern productions are romantic, not because they are new, but because they are weak, morbid, and sickly; and the antique is classic not because it is old but because it is strong, fresh, joyous, and healthy. If we distinguish classic and 'romantic' by these qualities, it will be easy to see our way clearly." 2 It seems to me that there is much vagueness in these distinctions. I would suggest that any story of adventures and experiences calculated to arouse our interest and play upon our sympathies might properly be taken to be a Romance; and that if such Romance succeeds in obtaining a place in the catalogue of the world's great stories, it, by that fact, becomes a classic. All the great classic stories of the world may be regarded as romances, and all the great romances as classics-Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Italian, French, Spanish, English, Scottish,-as the case may be. It would further follow that while all the classic stories are romantic, it would by no means follow that all romances are classic!

25. Sound Sense is the necessary basis of all great Literature and Art.-In other words, sound sense is the necessary basis of all great Art and of all great Literature. No Genius even is of any account but when he is grounded either on the actual or on the imaginative truth of things. The first demand which we make upon the Muses is that they shall speak to us in the sacred language of Common-sense. The Genius that draws its inspiration from Nature need never run dry; the Genius that does not draw its inspiration from

1 Keltie, 'British Dramatists,' p. 36.

2 'Conversations with Eckermann,' p. 380.