rose in Poetry: Pope,
Dryden, Walt Whitman. Poetry in Prose: Carlyle, Macaulay, Goethe." He
did not concur with Hudson's remark that the "full significance of
poetry can be appreciated only when it addresses us through the ear,"
and that "the silent perusal of the printed page will leave one of its
principal secrets unsurprised." Paul's comment on this:

Too sweeping a statement. Take, for example, poets like Milton
and Browning, where every line is fraught with some deep
philosophic meaning and must be pondered over for some time
before the whole of the greatness of the poetry is realised. In
these cases reading aloud is not nearly so good as private,
silent study.

He demurred to the proposition that while the function of Ethics is to
instruct, that of Art is to delight. "I hold," he writes, "that Art's
duty is to instruct as much as, if not more than, that of Ethics. Art
to be great must elevate and edify." Hudson wrote: "The common view
that the primitive ages of the world were ages of colossal
individualism is grotesquely unhistorical; they were, on the contrary,
ages in which group-life and group-consciousness were in the
ascendant." "Quite true," notes Paul. "See Maine's 'Ancient Law,'
where he points out that ancient history has nothing to do with the
individual but only with groups." Another annotated book is
Maeterlinck's "Wisdom and Destiny." To Maeterlinck's remark, "It is
often of better avail from the start to seek that which is highest,"
he adds: "Always, not often." He heartily subscribed to Maeterlinck's
doctrine that our attitude to life ought to be one of "gladsome,
enlightened acceptance, not a hostile, gloomy submission."

His philosophy of life was expressed in that beautiful passage in
Carlyle's essay on "Characteristics":

Here on earth we are as soldiers fighting in a foreign land; that
understand not the plan of the campaign and have no need to
understand it; seeing well what is at our hand to be done, let us
do it like soldiers, with submission, with courage, with a heroic
joy. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy
might." Behind us, behind each one of us, lie 6,000 years of
human effort, human conquest. Before us is the boundless Time,
with its as yet uncreated and unconquered continents and
Eldorados, which we, even we, have to conquer, to create; and
from the bosom of Eternity there shine f