poets able to do better work, Swinburne caps the climax. In the following single sentence, at least so we must judge where we have nothing but the punctuation marks to indicate the sense, we are told of fire kissing and killing, which is like light riotous and red flaming round bent—a word suggested by the round, perhaps-brows; and at the same time the fire, or the brows, or Semiramis, or the dead body-nobody can tell which-is kindling like dawn steely snows where treading feet feel snaky lines of blood hiss, in which, as is evident (?), they resemble creeping things that writhe but do not have, as one might suppose, stings to scare adulterers from an imperial bed, bowed -possibly boughed misspelt-with a load of lust. After this, the same blood, or something else, goes on to chill, as if that could put it out, a gust that made her body a fire, which now seems to have passed over the whole body from the brow to the heel, and is about to change a high bright spirit from taint of fraud. One supposing that no practical end is to be attained by trying to have poets avoid alloyed illustrative representation, will be in a fair way to have his doubts removed after he has made one honest attempt to put into plain prose these remarkable adventures of the amorous fire as related in this choice specimen of florid poetic art:

As fire that kisses, killing with a kiss,

He saw the light of death, riotous and red,
Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis
Re-risen and mightier, from the Assyrian dead,
Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice,
The steely snows of Russia, for the tread
Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss
The snaky lines of blood violently shed
Like living creeping things

That writhe but have no stings

To scare adulterers from the imperial bed
Bowed with its load of lust,

Or chill the ravenous gust

That made her body a fire from heel to head;

Or change her high bright spirit and clear,

For all its mortal stains, from taint of fraud or fear.

-Song for the Centenary of W. S. Landor.

The artistic mistake here, just as in the case of that allied to the "far-fetched simile," is that the figure, the design of which, when rightly used, is to represent, does not represent. It does the opposite. Instead of making the thought more concrete, and thus giving it more definiteness of form, it gives it indefiniteness.

But there is another mistake made in these methods, which is psychological as well as artistic. As has been seen, in all of these cases in which the clearness of representation is obscured by the excess of it, the course of the thought turns from the main subject, as if the writer had forgotten it, while going on to develop that which is suggested by the illustration. In the quotation above from Massey, for example, it is easy enough to see that, in the fifth line from the last, the phrase mask of gloom suggested tearful face, and this again dews, and this blood, and this the splashing of it, and all these things together, the red sunrise of retribution. In the quotation from Swinburne, beginning

All over the gray soft shallow,

quoted on page 312, we hear first of a bird; this suggests a brood; this suggests world's coursing skies, this suggests blossoms, this flowers, this putting flowers in a bosom, etc., while, in the last passage quoted from him, fire suggests light, kindling light suggests dawn, dawn suggests its effects on snow, snow the effects of feet treading it, treading suggests crawling, and crawling suggests

creeping. Worse than this, certain words seem suggested merely by their sounds which alliterate with words near them. Now, suppose a man in conversation were to let his thoughts run on in this way, deviating from the line of his argument or description, whenever he happened to strike a word the sense or sound of which suggested something different from that of which he started out to speak. What should we think of him? One of two things, either that he was insane, or had a very poorly disciplined mind. Precisely this is what is represented, so far as any thing is represented, by this kind of poetry. Yet, as we all know, the finest and highest art must represent the finest and highest efforts of the finest and highest powers of the mind. If this be so, then poetry modelled upon a form which is the legitimate and natural expression of an insane or a poorly disciplined mind, is not poetry of the finest and highest order.

CHAPTER XXVII.

REPRESENTATION IN POEMS CONSIDERED AS WHOLES.

Form in Words and Sentences-How Visible Appearances give an Impression of Form-How Movable Appearances do the Same-Consistency and Continuity in a Sentence Necessary to give it an Effect of FormA Poem a Series of Representations and of Sentences-Must have Manifest Consistency and Continuity giving it Manifest Unity and Progress, also Definiteness and Completeness-Form modelled on Direct Representation-How Figures can be carried out with Manifest Consistency and Continuity-Complete and Broken Figures-Examples of Poems with Forms modelled on the Methods of Illustrative Representation-How Excellence of Form in all Poems of whatever Length should be determined-Certain Poems not representing Unity and Progress— Great Poets see Pictures when conceiving their Poems; Inferior Poets think of Arguments—Same Principles applied to Smaller Poems-The Moral in Poetry should be represented not presented-Poetic Excellence determined not by the Thought but by the Form of the Thought, which must be a Form of Representation.

WE have been considering the representative nature

of poetry. It remains for us to consider the representative nature of a poem. All the products of art, it was said at the opening of this work, are acknowledged to have what is termed a form. In what sense can a poem be said to have form, and what is necessary to cause the form to be what it should be? In order to determine this, let us go back for moment to the method in which thought attains form in ordinary language of which poetry is a development. When we have noticed the principles

that operate there, we shall have something to aid us in solving our question here.

These principles are very simple. Sounds, or letters symbolizing them in a material sphere, represent a thought in the immaterial mind, and thus give it a form embodied in a word. Two or more words put together give form to compound words, phrases, or sentences. Let us examine the last of these for a moment. It is the most complex of the three, yet very simple as compared with the collection of words in a whole poem. At the same time, too, it is the most complete form of expression of the three-in fact, in its way an absolutely complete form of expression. A whole poem is more complete only in the sense that it is composed of a large number of these As mere vehicles of expression, therefore, every principle that applies to them applies to the poem as a whole, and if we can find out in what sense they can be said to have form, we can have something to guide us in determining in what sense a poem can be said to have form.

sentences.

What do we mean, then, by saying that a sentence has form? If it were a visible object we should say it had form in the degree in which it appeared to be one object, by which we should mean in the degree in which, owing to the effects of outlines, colors, or some other features, every part of the object seemed to be connected with every other part of it throughout the entire extent of space which it occupied. A sentence is not visible in space, but is apprehended in time,-in words that follow one another. Its substance is movement, and if we apply to it the same criterions as those usually applied to visible objects, changing only the terms that are necessary to refer to it as an object whose substance is movement,