If it teaches But every medal has its reverse; and reading aloud has its disillusions. us to admire, it also teaches us to discriminate. Sainte Beuve was right; a reader is a critic, a judge!-a judge to whom many hidden defects are revealed. How many sad discoveries I have made in this way! How many books and authors whom I admired,— whom others still admire,—failed to resist this terrible proof! We say that a thing stares us in the face; we may, with equal justice, say that it strikes our ear. The eye runs over the page, skips tedious bits, glides over dangerous spots! But the ear hears every thing! The ear makes no cuts! The ear is delicate, sensitive, and clairvoyant to a degree inconceivable by the eye. A word which, glanced at, pas ed unnoticed, assumes vast proportions when read aloud. A phrase which barely ruffled, now disgu>ts you. The greater the size of the audience, the more quick-sighted the reader becomes. An electric current is at once established between reader and audience, which becomes a means of mutual instruction. The reader teaches himself while teaching others. He needs not to be warned by their murmurs or signs of impatience: their very silence speaks to him; he reads their thoughts, foresees that a certain passage will shock, must shock them, long before he reaches it; it seems as if his critical faculties, roused and set in motion by this formidable contact with the public, attained a certain power of divination! vi. Members of a series, p. 573. vii. Conjunctions, p. 573. viii. Nominatives and qualifying words, p. 573. ix. Infinitive mood, p. 574. x. Ellipsis, p 574. xi. Inverted order, p. 574. xii. Emphatic words, p. 574. iii. Gesture, p. 575. Prejudice against gesture, p. 576. 1. Conceive vividly the location, p. 577. 3. Yield to the inclination to emphasize, p. 577. 4. Avoid gestures without reason, p. 577. Fundamental rule, p. 577. How far gesture should be carried, p. 578. Final direction, p. 579. THE ART OF READING, p. 580. Reading as a means of criticism, p. 582. PART VI. POETRY. CHAPTER XXXI. WHAT CONSTITUTES POETRY. I THINK nothing can be added to Milton's definition or rule of poetry, that it ought to be simple, sensuous, and impassioned; that is to say, single in conception, abounding in sensible images, and informing them all with the spirit of the mind.-COLERIDGE. Construction vs. Criticism.-Up to this point, the student has been instructed how to perform certain functions of speech. To converse, to write a letter or an essay, to make a speech that, if not eloquent, is at least not discreditable-of all these things the student may learn not only what constitutes excellence in them, but how he may attain it. He has been taught not only how to criticise, but how to construct. But the poet is born, not made. Art may help him to realize his possibilities, but it cannot inspire them. It may aid the rest of us to recognize and delight in poetry, but it will not supply us with poetical conceptions. Hear what he (Macaulay) says in the introduction to his Essay on Dryden: "The man who is best able to take a machine to pieces, and who most clearly comprehends the manner of its working, will be the man most competent to form another machine of similar power. In all the branches of physical and moral science which admit of perfect analysis, he who can resolve will be able to combine. But the analysis which criticism can effect of poetry is necessarily imperfect. One element must forever elude its researches; and that is the very element by which poetry is poetry." It is the old story. The botanist can take the flowers to pieces, show you the stamens, pistil, calyx, corolla, and all the rest of it, but can he put them together again? Can he grasp or recreate the mysterious thing which held them together and made the living flower? No; the life has escaped his grasp. Now this quick life, this vivid impulse, this unnamable essence which makes poetry to be poetry-these learning, criticism, study, reflection, may kill as I have said, but cannot create.-SHAIRP. A modern poet, whose own experience and productions exemplified his words, has said: "A man cannot say, I will write poetry; the greatest poet cannot say it, for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some irresistible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness. This power arises from within, like the color of a flower which dims and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or of its departure. It is, as it were, the interpenetration of a diviner nature within our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only on the wrinkled sand which paves it. Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." ... For what is it that is the primal source, the earliest impulse, out of which all true poetry in the past has sprung, out of which alone it can ever spring? Is it not the descent upon the soul, cr the flashing up from its inmost depths, of some thought, sentiment, emotion, which possesses, fills, kindles it—as we say, inspires it? It may be some new truth, which the poet has been the first to discern. It may be some world-old truth, borne in upon him so vividly that he seems to have been the first (man) who has ever seen it. New to him, a new dawn, as it were, from within, the light of it makes all it touches new.-SHAIRP. In the description of the Transfiguration, in St. Matthew, we are told that "Peter, James, and John his brother, were brought up into a high mountain apart," and that "a bright cloud overshadowed them." Applying with becoming reverence that sacred scene, I would say that poetry is a transfiguration, which takes place only at a certain elevation, and during which those who perceive it are overshadowed by a cloud, but a cloud that is bright. Poetry is a transfiguration of life; in other words, an imaginative representation, in verse or rhythm, of whatever men perceive, feel, think, or do.-ALFRED AUSTIN. The Importance of true criticism can be estimated only by those who recognize its rarity. Destructive criticism-mere flaw-picking, usually based on ignorance or lack of sympathetic imagination-is unfortunately common; for it presents to the conceited a temptation almost |