Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/22

 was at first broader, but I find it beyond my present materials. To deal with the question completely, to pass in review the effects of Sensualism on art, on music, on the drama, and above all to trace its physiological causes and consequences as expressed in all these different directions, would occupy far more time than I am able to bestow on the subject. Let me hope, however, that others may speak, now I have spoken, adding to mine their testimony and their protest.

Whilom the sisters nine were vestal maids But since, I saw it painted on Fame's wings, The Muses to be woxen wantonings. Ye bastard poets, see your progeny!".

true history of European poetry is the history of European progress, from the narrow microscopic pedantry of mediæval culture to the large telescopic sweep of modern thought and science. It is no part of my present plan to attempt the historical subject, except in so far as it affects the phenomena of the present day; and I need only indicate, therefore, how the ever-broadening poetry of humanity has flowed to us in one varying stream of increase since the day when, as Denham sings—

Old Chaucer, like the morning star, To us discovered day from far."

Chaucer and his contemporaries were, as all readers know, under deep obligations to the poets and romancists of