swer to your questionings perhaps more
simply truthful than man can utter, if you had rightly construed the
language."

"My good friend," answered Kenelm, "what you say sounds very prettily;
and it contains a sentiment which has been amplified by certain critics
into that measureless domain of dunderheads which is vulgarly called
BOSH. But though Nature is never silent, though she abuses the privilege
of her age in being tediously gossiping and garrulous, Nature never
replies to our questions: she can't understand an argument; she has
never read Mr. Mill's work on Logic. In fact, as it is truly said by a
great philosopher, 'Nature has no mind.' Every man who addresses her is
compelled to force upon her for a moment the loan of his own mind. And
if she answers a question which his own mind puts to her, it is only
by such a reply as his own mind teaches to her parrot-like lips. And as
every man has a different mind, so every man gets a different answer.
Nature is a lying old humbug."

The minstrel laughed merrily; and his laugh was as sweet as his chant.

"Poets would have a great deal to unlearn if they are to look upon
Nature in that light."

"Bad poets would, and so much the better for them and their readers."

"Are not good poets students of Nature?"

"Students of Nature, certainly, as surgeons study anatomy by dissecting
a dead body. But the good poet, like the good surgeon, is the man who
considers that study merely as the necessary A B C, and not as the
all-in-all essential to skill in his practice. I do not give the fame
of a good surgeon to a man who fills a book with details, more or less
accurate, of fibres and nerves and muscles; and I don't give the fame of
a good poet to a man who makes an inventory of the Rhine or the Vale of
Gloucester. The good surgeon and the good poet are they who understand
the living man. What is that poetry of drama which Aristotle justly
ranks as the highest? Is it not a poetry in which description of
inanimate Nature must of necessity be very brief and general; in which
even the external form of man is so indifferent a consideration that it
will vary with each actor who performs the part? A Hamlet may be fair
or dark. A Macbeth may be short or tall. The merit of dramatic poetry
consists in the substituting for what is commonly called Nature (namely,
external and material Nature) creatures intellectual, emotional, but
so purely immaterial that they may be said to be all mind a