ep,
Took up the Lady's voice, and laughed again;
The ancient Woman seated on Helm-crag
Was ready with her cavern; Hammar-scar,
And the tall steep of Silver-how, sent forth
A noise of laughter; southern Loughrigg heard,
And Fairfield answered with a mountain tone;
Helvellyn far into the clear blue sky
Carried the Lady's voice,--old Skiddaw blew
His speaking-trumpet;--back out of the clouds
Of Glaramara southward came the voice;
And Kirkstone tossed it from his misty head.

Now, this passage of Wordsworth I should call the
idealization of that of Drayton, who becomes poetical
only in the "stone-trophied head of Dunbalrase";
and yet the thought of both poets is the same.

Even what is essentially vulgar may be idealized by seizing and dwelling
on the generic characteristics. In "Antony and Cleopatra" Shakespeare
makes Lepidus tipsy, and nothing can be droller than the drunken gravity
with which he persists in proving himself capable of bearing his part in
the conversation. We seem to feel the whirl in his head when we find his
mind revolving round a certain fixed point to which he clings as to a
post. Antony is telling stories of Egypt to Octavius, and Lepidus, drawn
into an eddy of the talk, interrupts him:

_Lepidus_: You gave strange serpents there.

_Antony_ [_trying to shake him off_]: Ay, Lepidus.

_Lepidus_: Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud
by the operation of your sun: so is your crocodile.

_Antony_ [_thinking to get rid of him_]: They are so.

Presently Lepidus has revolved again, and continues, as if he had been
contradicted:

Nay, certainly, I have heard the Ptolemies' pyramises
are very goodly things; without contradiction, I have heard
that.

And then, after another pause, still intent on proving himself sober, he
asks, coming round to the crocodile again:

What manner o' thing is your crocodile?

Antony answers gravely:

It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath
breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own
organs: it lives by that which nourisheth it; and the elements
once out of it, it transmigrates.

_Lepidus_: What color is it of?

_Antony_: Of its own color, too.

_Lepidus_ [_meditatively_]: 'T is a strange serpent.

The ideal in expression, then, deals also with the generic, and evades
embarrassing particulars in a generalization. We say Tragedy with the
dagger and bowl, and i