Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/20

x is of poetry in the concrete, and as the actual record of human expression,—keeping ever in mind, no less, the uncapturable and mysterious spirit from which its energy is derived. I say this, because most essays upon the theme have been produced by one or the other of two classes,—either by transcendentalists who invoke the astral presence but underrate its fair embodiment, or by technical artisans who pay regard to its material guise alone. There is no good reason, I think, why both the essence and the incarnation of poetry may not be considered as directly as those of the less inclusive and more palpable fine arts. At all events, an attempt is made in this volume to do that very thing.

Even this enforced brevity makes it the more needful that my course should be in good faith what its title indicates—elementary. But the simplest laws and constituents, those most patent to common apprehension, are also the most profound and abiding. Their statement must be accurate, first of all; since, as in the present instance, it seeks to determine the initial aim, and a hairbreadth's deviation at the start means a ruinous divergence as the movement progresses. I make no apology, then, for what is elementary and oft-repeated, my wish being, in this opening discussion of that wherewith the Turnbull lectureship is concerned, to derive a statement of first