equable pleasure than
his verse. But he saw clearly enough the distinction in Donne between
intellect and the poetical spirit; that fatal division of two forces,
which, had they pulled together instead of apart, might have achieved a
result wholly splendid. Without a great intellect no man was ever a
great poet; but to possess a great intellect is not even a first step in
the direction of becoming a poet at all.

Compare Donne, for instance, with Herrick. Herrick has little enough of
the intellect, the passion, the weight and the magnificence of Donne;
but, setting out with so much less to carry, he certainly gets first to
the goal, and partly by running always in the right direction. The most
limited poet in the language, he is the surest. He knows the airs that
weave themselves into songs, as he knows the flowers that twine best
into garlands. Words come to him in an order which no one will ever
alter, and no one will ever forget. Whether they come easily or not is
no matter; he knows when they have come right, and they always come
right before he lets them go. But Donne is only occasionally sure of his
words as airs; he sets them doggedly to the work of saying something,
whether or no they step to the beat of the music. Conscious writer
though he was, I suppose he was more or less unconscious of his
extraordinary felicities, more conscious probably of how they came than
of what they were doing. And they come chiefly through a sudden
heightening of mood, which brings with it a clearer and a more exalted
mode of speech, in its merely accurate expression of itself. Even then I
cannot imagine him quite reconciled to beauty, at least actually doing
homage to it, but rather as one who receives a gift by the way.

1899.

EMILY BRONTE

This was a woman young and passionate,
Loving the Earth, and loving most to be
Where she might be alone with liberty;
Loving the beasts, who are compassionate;
The homeless moors, her home; the bright elate
Winds of the cold dawn; rock and stone and tree;
Night, bringing dreams out of eternity;
And memory of Death's unforgetting date.
She too was unforgetting: has she yet
Forgotten that long agony when her breath
Too fierce for living fanned the flame of death?
Earth for her heather, does she now forget
What pity knew not in her love from scorn,
And that it was an unjust thing to be born?

The Stoic in wo