ix should have its rise in emotion'; in both cases referring to the exact correspondence between the truth seen, or the feeling experienced, and the words in which truth or feeling find utterance; in both cases giving prominence to that immediacy which is the characteristic note of spontaneity. 4 Melody in the words. So Matthew Arnold (p. 7): To the style and manner of the best poetry their special character, their accent, is given by their diction, and, even yet more, by their movement.' And so Joubert: 'Their best literature is marked by choiceness and lucidity of thought, by well-selected words that delight through their natural harmony.' 5. Utmost spiritual contents in the words. Arnold knows two grand styles, the simple and the severe. The severe naturally arises when the poet's mind is too full charged to suffer him to speak more explicitly' (p.). But Joubert is still more felicitous, and deserves to speak the final word: 'It is not the opinions of authors and what in their teaching may be termed assertions, that instruct and nourish the mind. There is, in reading great authors, an invisible and hidden essence-a nameless something, a fluid, a salt, a subtle principlewhich is more nourishing than all the rest.' University of California, 10 August, 1887. ALBERT S. COOK. TOUCHSTONES OF POETRY. I Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of course we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside them. Short passages, even single lines, will serve our turn quite sufficiently. Take the two lines which I have just quoted from Homer, the poet's comment on Helen's mention of her brothers;-or take his 'Α δειλώ, τί σφῶν δόμεν Πηλήϊ ἀνακτι θνητῷ; ὑμεῖς δ ̓ ἐστὸν ἀγήρω τ' ἀθανάτω τε. * ἵνα δυστήνοισι μετ' ἀνδράσιν ἀλγε' ἔχητον; (‘Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, to a mortal? but ye are without old age, and immortal. Was it that with men born to misery ye might have sorrow?') -Iliad, xvii. 443-5. the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus ;-or, take finally, his Καὶ σέ, γέρον, τὸ πρὶν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὄλβιον εἶναι, ('Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we hear, happy.')—Iliad, xxiv. 543. the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. Take that incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino's tremendous. words : 'Io non piangeva; si dentro impietrai. ('I wailed not, so of stone grew I within; they wailed.') take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil: Io son fatta da Dio, sua mercè, tale, Che la vostra miseria non mi tange, Nè fiamma d'esto incendio non m'assale . . . ('Of such sort hath God, thanked be his mercy, made me, that your misery toucheth me not, neither doth the flame of this fire strike me.')-Inferno, ii. 91-3. take the simple, but perfect, single line : 'In la sua volontade è nostra pace.' ('In His will is our peace.')-Paradiso, iii. 85. Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth's expostulation with sleep :— 'Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge. . . ' -2 Henry IV, iii. 1. 20-2. and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio: 'If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proserpine, the loss ... which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world.' -P. L., iv. 270-1. These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious estimates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate. The specimens I have quoted differ widely from one another, but they have in common this: the |