s wanting, and all
for a purpose. The poet somewhere speaks of his utterance as "prophetic
screams." The prophetic element is rarely absent, the voice of one crying
in the wilderness, only it is a more jocund and reassuring cry than we are
used to in prophecy. The forthrightness of utterance, the projectile
force of expression, the constant appeal to unseen laws and powers of the
great prophetic souls, is here.

Whitman is poetic in the same way in which he is democratic, in the same
way in which he is religious, or American, or modern,--not by word merely,
but by deed; not by the extrinsic, but by the intrinsic; not by art, but
by life.

I am never tired of saying that to put great personal qualities in a poem,
or other literary work, not formulated or didactically stated, but in
tone, manner, attitude, breadth of view, love, charity, good fellowship,
etc., is the great triumph for our day. So put, they are a possession to
the race forever; they grow and bear fruit perennially, like the grass and
the trees. And shall it be said that the poet who does this has no worthy
art?

XIV

Nearly all modern artificial products, when compared with the ancient, are
characterized by greater mechanical finish and precision. Can we say,
therefore, they are more artistic? Is a gold coin of the time of Pericles,
so rude and simple, less artistic than the elaborate coins of our own day?
Is Japanese pottery, the glazing often ragged and uneven, less artistic
than the highly finished work of the moderns?

Are we quite sure, after all, that what we call "artistic form" is in any
high or fundamental sense artistic? Are the precise, the regular, the
measured, the finished, the symmetrical, indispensable to our conception
of art? If regular extrinsic form and measure and proportion are necessary
elements of the artistic, then geometrical flower-beds, and trees set in
rows or trained to some fancy pattern, ought to please the artist. But do
they? If we look for the artistic in these things, then Addison is a
greater artist than Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson says, "Addison speaks the
language of poets, and Shakespeare of men." Which is really the most
artistic? The one is the coin from the die, the other the coin from the
hand.

Tennyson's faultless form and finish are not what stamp him a great
artist. He would no doubt be glad to get rid of them if he could, at least
to keep them in abeyance and make them less obtrusive; he would give
an