there are many
who can afford to turn the commentator out of doors, especially if he
moralizes. But, after all, man is not pure sensibility, any more than he
is pure reason. And the aesthete will not lose if he occasionally allows
those whom he may think less sensitive than himself to the charm of
rhythmic phrase, to direct sober attention to the principles which lie
embedded in all great poetry. At the worst, to seek for truth in poetry
is a protest against the constant tendency to read it for the sake of
the emotions which it stirs, the tendency to make it a refined amusement
and nothing more. That is a deeper wrong to art than any which the
theoretical moralist can inflict. Of the two, it is better to read
poetry for ethical doctrines than for fine sensations; for poetry
purifies the passions only when it lifts the reader into the sphere of
truths that are universal.

The task of interpreting a poet may be undertaken in different ways. One
of these, with which we have been made familiar by critics of
Shakespeare and of Browning himself, is to analyze each poem by itself
and regard it as the artistic embodiment of some central idea; the other
is to attempt, without dealing separately with each poem, to reach the
poet's own point of view, and to reveal the sovereign truths which rule
his mind. It is this latter way that I shall try to follow.

Such dominant or even despotic thoughts it is possible to discover in
all our great poets, except perhaps Shakespeare, whose universality
baffles every classifier. As a rule, the English poets have been caught
up, and inspired, by the exceeding grandeur of some single idea, in
whose service they spend themselves with that prodigal thrift which
finds life in giving it. Such an idea gives them a fresh way of looking
at the world, so that the world grows young again with their new
interpretation. In the highest instances, poets may become makers of
epochs; they reform as well as reveal; for ideas are never dead things,
"but grow in the hand that grasps them." In them lies the energy of a
nation's life, and we comprehend that life only when we make clear to
ourselves the thoughts which inspire it. It is thus true, in the deepest
sense, that those who make the songs of a people make its history. In
all true poets there are hints for a larger philosophy of life. But, in
order to discover it, we must know the truths which dominate them, and
break into music in their poems.

Whether