nderness and piety, awaken their fancy, and exercise
pleasurably and wholesomely their imaginative and meditative powers. It
is no trifling benefit to provide a ready mirror for the young, in which
they may see their own best feelings reflected, and wherein "whatsoever
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are
pure, whatsoever things are lovely," are presented to them in the most
attractive form. It is no trifling benefit to send abroad strains which
may assist in preparing the heart for its trials, and in supporting it
under them. But there is a greater good than this, a farther benefit.
Although it is in verse that the most consummate skill in composition is
to be looked for, and all the artifice of language displayed, yet it is
in verse only that we throw off the yoke of the world, and are as it were
privileged to utter our deepest and holiest feelings. Poetry in this
respect may be called the salt of the earth; we express in it, and
receive in it, sentiments for which, were it not for this permitted
medium, the usages of the world would neither allow utterance nor
acceptance. And who can tell in our heart-chilling and heart-hardening
society, how much more selfish, how much more debased, how much worse we
should have been, in all moral and intellectual respects, had it not been
for the unnoticed and unsuspected influence of this preservative? Even
much of that poetry, which is in its composition worthless, or absolutely
bad, contributes to this good.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Such poetry, then, according to your view, is to be
regarded with indulgence.

_Montesinos_.--Thank Heaven, Sir Thomas, I am no farther critical than
every author must necessarily be who makes a careful study of his own
art. To understand the principles of criticism is one thing; to be what
is called critical, is another; the first is like being versed in
jurisprudence, the other like being litigious. Even those poets who
contribute to the mere amusement of their readers, while that amusement
is harmless, are to be regarded with complacency, if not respect. They
are the butterflies of literature, who during the short season of their
summer, enliven the garden and the field. It were pity to touch them
even with a tender hand, lest we should brush the down from their wings.

_Sir Thomas More_.--These are they of whom I spake as angling in shallow
waters. You will not regard with the same complacency those who tro