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force:--but the simple fact is that would we but permit ourselves to
look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under
the sun there neither exists nor _can_ exist any work more thoroughly
dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem _per
se_, this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written
solely for the poem's sake.

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom of man,
I would nevertheless limit, in some measure, its modes of inculcation. I
would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them by dissipation.
The demands of Truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles.
All _that_ which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all _that_
with which _she_ has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a
flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a
truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be
simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word,
we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact
converse of the poetical. _He_ must be blind indeed who does not
perceive the radical and chasmal difference between the truthful and the
poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption
who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to
reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious
distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I
place Taste in the middle because it is just this position which in the
mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme; but
from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that
Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the
virtues themselves. Nevertheless we find the _offices_ of the trio
marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns
itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful, while the Moral
Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the
obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with
displaying the charms, waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her
deformity, her disproportion, her animosity to the fitting, to the
appropriate, to the harmonious, in a word, to Beauty.

An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a
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