tal attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous:
for this same influencing of the soul--[Greek: _phychagoghia_] (a
beautiful word)--is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the
mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of
children unhappy: it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning
them into prigs dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers
of the Church lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the
face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine
amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to
be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he
tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that
which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in
respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the
Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much _Philosophus_ as to compare
the Philosopher, in _mooving_, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a
higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh
the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee
not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to
showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past
halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all
Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is
our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so
sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it.
Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at
the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may
long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which
must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with
doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful
proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the
well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth
unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from
the chimney-corner."

* * * * *

"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."--For having stripped
the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will
strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway
in a stanza of S