not the Plato of the Republic, but him of the Ion and the Symposium. In considering the ancient drama, Shelley has his eye upon the Athenians, Sidney upon Seneca and Plautus. His acquaintance with Greek literature enabled Shelley to assume toward Roman poetry the attitude of a stern but upright judge; this is shown as well in his appreciation of Lucretius as in his estimate of the general literary inferiority of the Romans, and in his censure of the Alexandrianism upon which no small part of the Latin poetry was nourished.

The moral instruction which poetry should impart appears, according to Sidney, to be, as it were, mechanically suspended in the liquid mass of poetry; according to Sidney, the bubbling wellspring of poetry is highly charged with secret medicinal virtue, which renders still more agreeable the medium by which it is conveyed. The one seeks to disguise a wholesome bitterness; the other is conscious of nothing but an exhilarating and healthful potency. Sidney, in his utilitarian vein, can condescend to speak of the mnemonic value of verse. He presents himself before us as an ad- int vocate holding a brief for a discredited client, and seeking to convince by any fair means, even to the sacrifice of the defendant's dignity. His eloquence is forensic and practical, like the literary genius of Rome. It deals with the tangible, the ponderable; with it he descends into the arena in order to conquer. Once there, if his adversary's armor resist the keen thrust of his sword, he is willing, like a Homeric hero, to cast about for some convenient boulder with which to crush him. Shelley, on the other hand, disdains to leave the empyrean. Thence if he hurl a missile, it shall be the bolt of Jove, which dazzles while it smites. To his glance the farthest horizons are simultaneously disclosed. Accordingly, he recognizes the identity of poetry with invention; with every species of fine art; with the prescience of great lawgivers; with an intuitional philosophy; with vision which, in the poverty of language, we call prophetic, but which is really timeless, affirmatory of an eternal Now.

Shelley's historical perspective is larger and juster than Sidney's; he sees the ages unroll the panoramic destinies of the race, and marks the elements of renewal and decay. He gazes critically at the past, and hopefully into the future. Sidney could not see a decade in advance, could not even discern the youthful Shakespeare; Shelley virtually foresaw the whole transcendental movement in England and America, with the train of beneficial effects by which it was to be accompanied. In a word and a figure, if Sidney is mounted on a strong and active steed, it is still of mortal strain, while Shelley is aloft on Pegasus, and scarcely condescends to touch the ground in his airy flight.

3. THE PROVINCES OF INSPIRATION AND OF LABOR.

In one point of the highest importance Shelley has perhaps expressed himself too strongly. Speaking of the impotence of the will in the production of poetry, he explains (p. 39): "I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day whether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labor and study. The toil and the delay recommended by critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connection of the spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions."

can be given by What testimony

The decision in this matter is one that none so well as by the poets themselves. is borne by the ancients, and what by the moderns? If it were possible to compare the utterances of men so various as Pindar, Horace, Dante, Milton, Goethe, Schiller, Burns, and Shelley himself— Shelley the artist rather than Shelley the theorist - it would seem that the question might be settled.

Pindar is usually regarded as the type of the fiery and

impassioned poet. In certain of his odes he characterizes his own processes. Do these exclude labor and study? According to that most accomplished and poetic of his editors, Professor Gildersleeve, it is quite otherwise (p. xxxvi): "Of the richness of his workmanship none is better aware than he. The work of the poet is a Dædalian work, and the sinuous folds are wrought with rare skill (O. 1, 105), the art of art is selection and adornment, the production of a rich and compassed surface (P. 9, 83). The splendor of the Goddesses of Triumphal Song irradiates him (P. 9, 97), and he is a leader in the skill of poesy, which to him is by eminence wisdom (σopía), wisdom in the art of the theme, and in the art of the treatment." And again (p. xliii): "Pindar is a jeweller, his material gold and ivory, and his chryselephantine work challenges the scrutiny of the microscope, invites the study that wearies not day or night in exploring the recesses in which the artist has held his art sequestered invites the study and rewards it."

To the same effect is the judgment of Croiset, the author of a fascinating book entitled La Poésie de Pindare (pp. 153-5): "From what precedes it will be sufficiently clear that we should be forming a totally false notion of Greek lyric poetry, if, in conformity with certain modern prepossessions, we supposed it to be the product of unreasoning impulse and blind inspiration. Nothing is less artless, in one way, than the fine frenzy of the Greek lyric. In these show-pieces of his art, the poet has but a general and remote interest in the things of which he is discoursing. It is solely by means of the imagination, and in a manner wholly artificial, that he succeeds in arousing his own emotional activity. Friendship, gratitude for open-handed hospitality, even piety in its stated and formal manifestations, are not sentiments which can ravish the poet out of his self-possession; and we can attribute still less influence to the stipulated fee, often the immediate cause of his strains. There are a thou

sand proprieties for him to observe. He must possess tact and pliancy of spirit which shall be equal to every occasion. Nothing is more difficult than to eulogize gracefully, — and precisely in this the whole art of the lyric poet consists. Whether gods or men form his subject, praise is his exclusive concern. Hence it is deep and continuous reflection, not ecstasy of any sort, which will conduct him to his goal. If ecstasy has any share in the production, it is chiefly in the final working up of his materials, after art and learning have foreseen everything, calculated and disposed everything, with reference to the effect intended.

"To all this the lyric poets paid full heed. In the preceding pages we have already passed in review a considerable number of Pindar's verses which contain allusions to laws by which he felt himself bound. At other times he pretends to lose his way, then checks and corrects himself, and leads his chariot back again into the right road, and by so doing furnishes the proof that even his poetic rapture never ceases to keep watch over itself. The lyric poets often allude to reefs on which they must beware of shattering their barks. Now the danger is one of excessive length, now of a superfluity of praise, again of triteness or monotony. Consummate skill is necessary in order to avoid these perils. Nothing is less like a wild and headlong career than this circumspect advance, so mindful of all its steps in the midst of its superb dignity and magnificent speed. The lyric poet calls himself a cunning workman, a craft-master, for so we may translate the Greek words σοφός and σοφιστής which Pindar employs. He speaks of his talent as readily as of his Muse. He is fully conscious of his art and prides himself upon it. It is not through some chance inspiration that he brings to light such marvels; it is through a science. which is perfectly master of itself, through an art which adds to the gifts of the Graces and the Muses that which is no less necessary, experience and craftsmanship. The poet's

inspiration is subject to laws, to fixed rules. These he must know and to these he must submit."

Of Horace, generally esteemed the calmer and saner mind, the dictum is well-known (Art of Poetry, 408-411): "Whether by genius or by art an excellent poem is produced, has often been the question; but I do not see what can be done by study without a rich vein of intellect, nor by genius when uncultivated; so true is it that either requires the help of either, and that the two combine in friendly union."

...

Dante has been quoted in the note to the passage. Milton, though in a quite different form of words, virtually echoes the Horatian sentiment (Reason of Church Government) : "I began thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labor and intense study, which I take to be my portion in this life, joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die. . . . I applied myself to that resolution which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue. Nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs."

Goethe might be quoted in favor of the extreme view, and might even be thought to go further than Shelley himself (Eckermann, March 11, 1828): "No productiveness of the highest kind, no remarkable discovery, no great thought which bears fruit and has results, is in the power of any one;