a Goethe. These were men of three-storied brain and also of thrice
capacious soul.

Says Coleridge: "No man was ever yet a great poet without being a
profound philosopher." For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of
all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language;
and Carlyle tells us of Goethe, "His resources have been accumulated
from nearly all the provinces of human intellect and activity," while
his culture was learned "not from art and literature alone, but also by
action and passion in the rugged school of experience."

It is, therefore, not for nothing that Lowell declares--

I believe the poets; it is they
Who utter wisdom from the central deep.

Nor is it for nothing that Wordsworth declares poetry to be "the breath
and finer spirit of all knowledge." The student of poetry may doubtless
be studying aesthetics, but he is not merely dallying with aesthetics. If
he is communing thoughtfully with mighty spirits like these--the
penetrators to the central deep--is he not gaining, by the most royal
road known to humanity, the most liberal education for the fullest life?

* * * * *

But we are not, it is true, always with the greatest poets. We are not
always breathing the keen air of the very mountain tops. There is
permanent value to be drawn also from writers in a rank below these
greatest seers and creators. A Pope or a Dryden has packed into clear,
rememberable, and serviceable shape considerable masses of wisdom and
good sense--shrewd and enlightening, if not always lofty or original.
The terse and pregnant essays of Bacon, the brusque, cant-hating wit and
wisdom of Samuel Johnson, the critical sagacities of Hazlitt, the
remorseless searchings of Carlyle, the brilliant expositions of
Macaulay--to listen to these, to ponder and assimilate their best, is
both to train the mind and to furnish it. Nay, even if a Plato or a
Ruskin leave not one single dogma consciously grasped by the student's
faith, they have, nevertheless, been in the highest degree invigorating
and ennobling company. To associate with a Scott is to associate with
high and wholesome character.

* * * * *

Such are the great writers of the first rank and second rank who form
great literature; and to them the student has recourse when in quest of
"the best that has been thought and said in the world." If what he
gathers is not applied by him to lif