which is, I suppose, the reason why we love to call and make things mysterious. We may be quite unable to follow the simplest reasoning beyond twice two makes four; the proposition that, if A and C are equal to B, they are equal to one another, may be outside our mental range; but give us a mystery, and we can understand that at once. The elementary truth that any two sides of a triangle are greater than the third side might take us months of consideration to realise; but Genius? yes, of course we know what Genius is! To define intellectual passion would be quite as difficult, no doubt; but the phrase has at least the merit of referring the mystery back to its true source, the mind, instead of implying some power extraneous to the mind, and thereby encouragin 11 kinds of pretenders, who claim to ma mind and their lack of session of Genius; de in particular, to the Intellectual pass familiar name for imagination, but is douce it there is any general recognition I flected in all great poetry. Water possessed it in a very high degre that very reason is doubt if any poem can a ago one of our gas ing pa most moder: Pony, De looks full it or se for praise. As in = are no dances. in + on tä tible of, is one great cause of the corruption But criticism is no part of my purpose. I merely wish to lay the utmost stress on the great harm that accrues to Art, and most of all to Poetry, from the common tradition and superstition concerning Genius. A careful consideration of the matter would, I am certain, prove that the compound quality we so name is an agglomeration, of which the central and attracting portion is imagination, the product of a passionate intellect, sustained and elevated by wide and deliberate study. The true poet has "a soul for which conversation with itself is a necessity of existence. But what pains ought he not to take that this conversation should be worthy and effectual? 2 It will be a jubilee day for Poetry when this is recognised and acknowledged; for not till then shall we be able to reprove the depreciation of the Poet by quoting the plain, 1 See Anima Poetae, edited by E. H. Coleridge, p. 165. 2 Marius the Epicurean, by W. Pater, vol. 1, p. 50. straightforward words from Tom Brown's School-Days: "Remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do."1 1 P. 184. CHAPTER IV THROUGH FALSE VALUE SET ON POPULAR JUDGMENT BESIDES the paralysing fallacy of Genius, another is prevalent almost as foolish, but lacking, hitherto, the dignity of a precise name. If the poet is supposed to be endowed with a strange and inexplicable power of composition, the public is also credited with an equally strange power of criticism. We constantly hear that the Public is the Judge said quite reverently, as if it were a sacred aphorism. Every true artist knows that this is false; except in the commercial sense, that the Public pays for what it likes and declines to pay for what it dislikes or cannot appreciate, and that those who choose Art for a livelihood are compelled to bid for immediate public favour. But their |