have been perceived,-in that degree will the product be likely to lose its artistic qualities.

Some who may not recognize the truth of this statement, when viewed from a theoretical standpoint, may, when viewed from a practical. Let us look at it in this way then whatever is added to the representation must come, in the last analysis, from the artist; and from him, when not exercising his legitimate artistic functions; when, instead of giving us a picture of nature and man, as he finds them, he has begun to give us his own explanations and theories concerning them. Now all explanation and theories, as we know, are necessarily the outgrowth-if not of ignorance or superstition-at least of the intellectual or spiritual condition of the age in which one lives. For this reason, to a succeeding age they are not satisfactory, even if they do not prove to be wholly fallacious; and a work of science or philosophy that is made up of them usually dies, because men outgrow their need of it, and do not care to keep it alive. A work of artistic poetry, on the contrary, lives because its pages image the phenomena of nature, and of human life, which can really be perceived, and most of these remain from age to age unchanged. A writer who confines himself to these, which alone can be used legitimately in representation, is, as Jonson' said of Shakespear," not of an age but for all time"; and this fact can be affirmed of men like him alone. Out of the thousands of poems written in the past, only those have come down to us, and are termed classic, which are characterized by an absence of explanations and theories, and a presence of that kind of representation which has here been termed pure. How important, then, it is for the poet of the present to under

'To the memory of my beloved master William Shakespear.

stand just what the nature and requirements of this pure representation are, and what are the methods of rendering it alloyed that should be avoided.

We shall start at the beginning of our subject, if we notice, first, certain influences tending to divert the poet from his legitimate work, and causing him to depart from the methods of pure representation. These will be considered in the present chapter.

Taking up first in order direct representation, it follows, from what has been said already, that composition in the plain language of this form can be nothing except prose, the moment the writer ceases to think in pictures; the moment, therefore, that, without using figurative language, he begins to be didactic or argumentative. Notice how easy it would be to glide into prose from a passage like the following. All that saves it, as it is, are the pictures of William, of the two women, and of the old man, which, as we read it, rise up irresistibly before the imagination.

"O Sir, when William died, he died at peace
With all men; for I asked him, and he said,
He could not ever rue his marrying me.
I had been a patient wife: but, Sir, he said
That he was wrong to cross his father thus:

'God bless him !' he said, ' and may he never know

The troubles I have gone through!' Then he turned.

His face and passed-unhappy that I am !

But now, Sir, let me have my boy, for you

Will make him hard, and he will learn to slight

His father's memory; and take Dora back,

And let all this be as it was before."

So Mary said, and Dora hid her face

By Mary. There was silence in the room;

And all at once the old man burst in sobs :

"I have been to blame-to blame! I have killed my son!"

-Dora: Tennyson.

Following chapters will contain so many contrasted passages of pure and alloyed representation in the direct form, that it would be superfluous to introduce any more of them here. Besides this, whatever poetic principles their introduction would illustrate, can be brought out as well while we go on to consider what is a far more important part of our present discussion, namely, the influences tending to divert the poet from his legitimate work when composing in figurative language.

As all illegitimate tendencies are usually developed in some way from legitimate ones, perhaps the best method of approaching our present subject is to start by recalling what has been said before with reference to the necessity, in order to express certain phases of thought, of a poet's writing in figurative language. From this necessity it follows that he will be impelled to use figures whenever, for any reason, he feels that plain language will not serve his purpose. Two circumstances, inclusive, in a broad way, of many others, will justify him, as we can see, in having this feeling: first, where the impression to be conveyed is very great or complex in its nature. Very frequently, in these circumstances, plain direct representation might not only fail to do justice to the subject, but might positively misrepresent it. Milton wished to convey an impression of the size and power of Satan. It would scarcely have been possible for him to do this adequately without making his representation illustrative; and by taking this course he has furnished us with an example of a pure and legitimate use of this form.

Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,

Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,
Briareus, or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th' ocean stream:
Him haply slumb'ring on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lea, while night
Invests the sea, and wished for morn delays:

So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay,
Chained on the burning lake, nor ever thence
Had risen or heav'd his head.

-Paradise Lost, 1.

The second circumstance that justifies a writer in feeling that he must not use direct representation is this:-not the fact that the impression to be conveyed is too great or complex to be represented truthfully in this manner, but just the opposite:-the fact that it is too small and simple to be represented adequately in this manner. When the scene to be described is one that in itself is fitted to awaken the deepest and grandest feelings and thoughts, then, as in the concluding paragraph of " Paradise Lost," given a few pages back, direct representation is all that is needed. Wherever, in fact, the ideas to be presented are sublime or pathetic in themselves, the one thing necessary is that the reader should realize them as they are; and any indirectness in the style rather hinders than furthers this. A celebrated preacher once said that passages in his sermons that were full of thought he delivered calmly, but when he came to passages that were destitute of it, he instinctively felt that it was time for him to "holler." A similar principle is apt to control style

in poetry. Indeed, the main reason for the large preponderance of direct over illustrative representation in the works of Homer and of the Greek tragedians, is undoubtedly this,-that most of the persons and actions of which they treated were heroic in their nature. They needed only to be represented as they were, in order to awaken admiration. It is the boast of our modern times, however, that we have learned to take an interest in common men and actions. The poet feels that he misses that which perhaps is noblest in his mission if he fail to help the humblest of his fellows, physically, mentally, socially, morally, and spiritually, by doing his best to lead them out of the condition of poor Peter Bell. He, as you may remember,

Out of this condition it is the duty of the poet to bring