nfluence, like an
inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." But the Poet's way
of reporting these apprehensions to his fellows, since he deals with
Universals or ideas, is by "universalising" or "idealising" his story:
and upon these two terms, which properly mean much the same thing, we
must pause for a moment.

The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately
two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false
prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage
an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or
disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its
own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away
from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or
fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," on
the other hand, means that, instead of trusting to this naked
manifestation, we add to it some graces of our invention, some touches
by which we think to improve it; that we "paint the lily," in short. But
the true "idealisation" and the first business of the poet is a
_denuding_ not an _investing_ of the Goddess, whether her name be
"Life," "Truth," "Beauty," or what you will: a revealing, not a
coverture of embroidered words, however pretty and fantastic; as has
been excellently said by Shelley: "A poem _is the very image of life
expressed in its external truth_. There is this difference between a
story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which
have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and
effect; the other is the erection of actions according to the
unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the
Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." Let us enforce
this account of the true idealisation by a verse or two of our old
friend Sir John Davies (quoted by Coleridge in his _Biographia
Literaria_). "What an unworldly mass of impressions the mind would be,"
says Sir John in effect, "did not the soul come to the rescue and reduce
these crowding bodies by 'sublimation strange.'"--

_From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms,
And draws a kind of Quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.
This doth She when from things particular
She doth abstract the Universal kinds...._

But it is time to descend