As if an angel dropped down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,

And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

—1 Henry IV., iv., 1: Shakespear.

Notice, too, to what an extent the element of beauty is introduced into the following, through the use of illustrative representation :

For up the porch there grew an Eastern rose

That, flowering high, the last night's galę had caught,
And blown across the walk. One arm aloft-
Gowned in pure white, that fitted to the shape-
Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood.

A single stream of all her soft brown hair
Poured on one side: the shadow of the flowers
Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering
Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist-

Ah, happy shade !—and still went wavering down,
But ere it touched a foot that might have danced
The green sward into greener circles, dipt
And mixed with shadows of the common ground!
But the full day dwelt on her brows, and sunned
Her violet eyes, and all her Hebe-bloom,
And doubled his own warmth against her lips,
And on the bounteous wave of such a breast
As never pencil drew. Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.
—The Gardener's Daughter: Tennyson.

Milton says that poetry must be simple, sensuous, and passionate. The above certainly meets all these requireRead this too from Shakespear's Antony and

ments.

Cleopatra:

I will tell you.

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver;

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water, which they beat, to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion (cloth of gold, of tissue)
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy out-work nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers colored fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they did, undid.

Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids,

So many mermaids, tended her i' th' eyes,
And made their bends adoring at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthron'd i' th' market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to th' air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.

-Antony and Cleopatra, ii., 2: Shakespear. Perhaps no poetical passage could exemplify better than this that which distinguishes the sensuous from the sensual. Describing conditions which some of our modern poets would think would justify them in throwing every shred of drapery overboard, it reveals nothing that the most delicate taste cannot enjoy. The picture appeals solely to the imagination, and to nothing lower, which proves that Shakespear, although a poet, had enough practical sense to know that verse which does not appeal to the highest æsthetic nature cannot be in the highest sense artistic.

CHAPTER XXV.

EXPLANATORY ALLOY IN ILLUSTRATIVE REPRESENTATION.

Illustrations that are not always necessarily representative-Their Development gradually traced in Descriptions of Natural Scenery-Practical Bearing of this on the Composition of Orations-Why Common People hear some gladly and others not at all-Obscure Styles not BrilliantExamples of Obscure Historical and Mythological References in Poetry -Alloyed Representation Short-lived-How References to possibly unknown Things are made in Poetry that lives-Mixture of Main and Illustrating Thought so as to destroy Representation-Examples of how this Result may be prevented.

IT
T must not be supposed that a poet, even though he
uses illustrative representation, can overcome-merely
by doing this-the tendency in his verse to pay too much
attention relatively to thought as contrasted with form,
and thus to make his representation not pure but alloyed.
Alloyed illustrative representation is a fault on a larger
scale, similar to that of the "blending" of metaphors in
which plain and figurative language are both used with
reference to the same object in the same clause or sen-
tence (see Chapter XVIII.). To understand the nature of
this fault we must go back to pure representation for a
moment. The sixth line of the following is a departure
from pure representation. It expresses what could not
have been perceived: it explains.

So saying, from the pavement he half rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes

As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere

Remorsefully regarded through his tears,

And would have spoken, but he found not words.
-Mort D'Arthur: Tennyson.

Even in Homer, notwithstanding assertions made to the contrary, we find exceptional passages identical in character with this:

Back he sprang,

Hiding amid the crowd, that so the Greeks

Might not behold the wounded limb, and scoff.

-Iliad, 12: Bryant's Trs.

This last line is not characteristic of Homer. But there are numberless ones like it in the works of modern writers, for the reason that all of us modern people are more accustomed than the ancient to look beneath the surface of things; and therefore we are more prone in our descriptions to assign real or imaginary motives to the actions of those whom we are watching. The moment, however, that this analyzing of motives becomes characteristic of description, the style is evidently in danger of becoming less representative. To show the effect produced upon it, notice this quotation from Crabbe's Parish Register. It is certainly poetry; series of pictures are called up as we read it; the general is embodied in the concrete; the versification adds to the interest that we take in the ideas expressed in it; and yet nothing could be more unlike the poetry of Homer; and this because it is not pure representation, but representation alloyed with much that is merely a direct presentation of the writer's own thoughts.

Phoebe Dawson gayly crossed the green;
In haste to see and happy to be seen;
Her air, her manners, all who saw, admired,
Courteous though coy, and gentle though retired;

Lo! now with red rent cloak and bonnet black,
And torn green gown loose hanging at her back,
One who an infant in her arms sustains,

And seems in patience striving with her pains,
Pinched are her looks, as one who pines for bread,
Whose cares are growing, and whose hopes are fled;
Pale her parched lips, her heavy eyes sunk low,
And tears unnoticed from their channels flow;
Serene her manner, till some sudden pain

Frets the meek soul, and then she 's calm again.

To understand how this explanatory poetry, in which thought that is not at all representative is constantly being thrust into the form, can be produced even when figurative language is used, let us trace the gradual development of the tendency from its beginning. In the following description of evening, analogies are drawn between certain effects usually seen in connection with evening, and certain others usually seen in connection with human beings. In each case, however, only such effects are mentioned as are externally perceptible, like those represented in the words twilight, silence, Hesperus, and moon on the one hand, and in the words still, gray, livery, clad, accompanied, pleased, led, rode, rising, majesty, and apparent queen, on the other. For this reason, as we read the description, the picture of what is done by a human being, as well as of the evening effect to which this s likened, comes at once before the imagination.

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray

Had in her sober livery all things clad ;