ng men like his own wise physician, Melampus, with
eyes that search the book of Nature closely, as well for love of her as to
discover and extract her healing secrets.

"'With love exceeding a simple love of the things
That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;
Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings
From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;
Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;
Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;
The good physician Melampus, loving them all,
Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.

"'For him the woods were a home and gave him the key
Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and
flowers.
The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we
To earth he sought, and the link of their life with
ours. . . .'

"Here by another road we come to a teaching which is also the Gospels':
that to apprehend the highest truth one must have a mind of extreme
humility. 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,'
'Neither shall they say, Lo here! or Lo there! for behold the kingdom of
God is within you,' 'And He took a little child and set him in the midst
of them,' &c. Poetry cannot make these sayings any truer than they are,
but it can illuminate for us the depths of their truth, and so (be it
humbly said) can help their acceptance by man. If they come down from
heaven, derived from arguments too high for his ken, poetry confirms them
by arguments taken from his own earth, instructing him the while to read
it as--

"'An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet
Buried, and breathing, and to be,'

"And teaching him, 'made lowly wise,' that the truth of the highest heavens
lies scattered about his feet.

"'Melampus dwelt among men, physician and sage,
He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed,
Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage
Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed.
He played on men, as his master Phoebus on strings
Melodious: as the God did he drive and check,
Through love exceeding a simple love of the things
That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.'

"I think, if we consider the essence of this teaching, we shall have no
difficulty now in understanding why Mr. Meredith's hopes harp so
persistently on the 'young gener