and he saw that words have a far higher
reason than the utilitarian office of imparting a man's thought. The
common notion that language and linked words are important only as a
means of expression he found a little ridiculous; as if electricity
were to be studied solely with the view of "wiring" to people, and all
its other properties left unexplored, neglected. Language, he understood,
was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of
words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely
arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps
more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict thought than
the impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of
the sensuous art of literature; it was the secret of suggestion, the art
of causing delicious sensation by the use of words. In a way, therefore,
literature was independent of thought; the mere English listener, if he
had an ear attuned, could recognize the beauty of a splendid Latin
phrase.

Here was the explanation of the magic of _Lycidas_. From the standpoint
of the formal understanding it was an affected lament over some wholly
uninteresting and unimportant Mr. King; it was full of nonsense about
"shepherds" and "flocks" and "muses" and such stale stock of poetry; the
introduction of St Peter on a stage thronged with nymphs and river gods
was blasphemous, absurd, and, in the worst taste; there were touches of
greasy Puritanism, the twang of the conventicle was only too apparent.
And _Lycidas_ was probably the most perfect piece of pure literature in
existence; because every word and phrase and line were sonorous, ringing
and echoing with music.

"Literature," he re-enunciated in his mind, "is the sensuous art of
causing exquisite impressions by means of words."

And yet there was something more; besides the logical thought, which was
often a hindrance, a troublesome though inseparable accident, besides the
sensation, always a pleasure and a delight, besides these there were the
indefinable inexpressible images which all fine literature summons to the
mind. As the chemist in his experiments is sometimes astonished to find
unknown, unexpected elements in the crucible or the receiver, as the
world of material things is considered by some a thin veil of the
immaterial universe, so he who reads wonderful prose or verse is
conscious of suggestions that cannot be put into words, whic