Anima Poetae, edited by E. H. Coleridge. Heinemann. 1895. Tom Brown's School-Days, by T. Hughes. Macmillan. 1885. Degeneration, by Max Nordau. Heinemann. 1896. Prose Fancies, by Richard Le Gallienne. John Lane. 1885. Essays of Montaigne. Stott. 1889. xix "And now, lastly, will be the time to read with them those organic arts which enable men to discourse and write perspicuously, elegantly, and according to the fittest style, of lofty, mean, or lowly. Logic, therefore, so much as is useful... To which Poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtile and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate. . . . That sublime art which in Aristotle's Poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe. This would make them soon perceive what despicable creatures Our common rhymers and play-writers be; and show them what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry, both in divine and human things."-John Milton On Education. THE POET'S CHARTER OR THE BOOK OF JOB CHAPTER I THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION It is a remarkable symptom of modern civilised life that many books are written, purporting to be religious, which contain merely sentimental morality or some individual view of moral questions. It is not necessary, for my present purpose, to discuss whether Religion can exist apart from Ethics. At all events the essence of Religion is not Ethics, but something at once infinitely more simple and infinitely more complex. Of all the definitions of Religion collected |