properly be applied to "every metrical composition from which we
derive pleasure without any laborious exercise of the understanding."
In this category, what becomes of Browning, whom Sharp characterizes
"the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself in poetry
since Shakespeare"? Wordsworth, who has influenced all the poets since
his day, declares poetry to be "the breath and finer spirit of all
knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance
of all science." Matthew Arnold accepts this dictum, and uses it to
further his own idea of the great future of poetry as that to which
mankind will yet turn, "to interpret life for us, to console us, to
sustain us,"--even in place of religion and philosophy. And yet, some
of the highest and finest of known poetic flights have been in the
expression of religious and philosophical truth; while on the other
hand Wordsworth's characterization of poetry turns the cold shoulder
to that which is neither knowledge nor science, the all-powerful
passion of Love--probably the most universal fount and origin of
poetry since the human race began to express its thoughts and feelings
at all. Coleridge enlarges Wordsworth's phrase, and makes poetry "the
blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thought, human
passions, emotions, language." This is fine; yet it is but a figure,
denoting the themes and ignoring the form of poetic production.

Quaint old Thomas Fuller gives a pretty simile when he says that
"Poetry is music in words, and music is poetry in sound"; and, in
so far as melodious form and harmonious thought express and arouse
emotion, he gives a hint of the truth.

The German Jean Paul Richter says an admirable thing: "There are so
many tender and holy emotions flying about in our inward world, which,
like angels, can never assume the body of an outward act; so many
rich and lovely flowers spring up, which bear no seed, that it is
a happiness poetry was invented, which receives into its limbus all
these incorporeal spirits, and the perfume of all these flowers."
True: but the tremendous domain of Tragedy--emotion neither holy nor
tender--has been most fruitful of poetic power, and that finds here no
recognition.

Edmund Burke's rather disparaging remark that poetry is "the art of
substituting shadows, and of lending existence to nothing," has yet a
vital suggestion, reminding one of Shakespeare's graphic touch in "The
Tempest":

"And, as