itional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be
observed.... The distinction between poets and prose writers is a
vulgar error." Shelley goes on to instance Plato and Bacon as true
poets, though they wrote in prose. "The popular division into prose
and verse," he repeats, "is inadmissible in accurate philosophy."

Its philosophic function.

Then again, upon what Wordsworth calls "the more philosophical
distinction" between Poetry and Matter of Fact--quoting, of course,
the famous +"Philosophoteron kai spoudaioteron"+ passage in the
_Poetics_--it is wonderful with what hearty consent our poets pounce
upon this passage, and paraphrase it, and expand it, as the great
justification of their art: which indeed it is. Sidney gives the
passage at length. Wordsworth writes, "Aristotle, I have been told,
hath said that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writings: it is
so." Coleridge quotes Sir John Davies, who wrote of Poesy (surely with
an eye on the _Poetics_):

"From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things;
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.

"Thus does she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kinds;
Which then reclothed in divers names and fates
Steal access through our senses to our minds."

And Shelley has a remarkable paraphrase, ending, "The story of
particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which
should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that
which is distorted."

In fine, this book goes far to prove of poetry, as it has been proved
over and over again of other arts, that it is the men big enough to
break the rules who accept and observe them most cheerfully.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE PUBLIC TOWARDS LETTERS

Sept. 29, 1894. The "Great Heart" of the Public.

I observe that our hoary friend, the Great Heart of the Public, has
been taking his annual outing in September. Thanks to the German
Emperor and the new head of the House of Orleans, he has had the
opportunity of a stroll through the public press arm in arm with his
old crony and adversary, the Divine Right of Kings. And the two have
gone once more a-roaming by the light of the moon, to drop a tear,
perchance, on the graves of the Thin End of the Wedge and the Stake in
the Country. You know the unhappy story?--how the Wedge drov