Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/229

Rh and need not, however, go to the other extreme. To the human eye, with its halting susceptibilities, the horse and the wheel do not appear exactly as when caught by Mr. Muybridge's camera, and the artist's office is to present them as they seem to us. In the prosaic photograph they are struck with death: the idea of life, of motion, can only be conveyed by blending the spokes of the wheel as they are blended to the human vision, and by giving a certain unreality of grace to the speeding animal. Otherwise, you have the fact, which is not art.

Thus every workman must be a realist in knowledge, an idealist for interpretation, and Poetic truth is both realistic and ideal.—See, also, p. 145. the antagonism between realists and romancers is a forced one; and when any one rules the poet out of debate, as of course a feigner, he is in error, for the same law applies to all the arts. The true inquiry concerns the quality of the writer, his power of expression, the limits of his character. For no small and limited nature can enter into great passions and experiences.

It is a fine thing for a poet to express the life, feeling, ideal, of his own people; by so Truth of environment. doing, he betters his chance of commending himself to after times. This is what the Greeks did, but in our century we find poet after poet exercising his skill upon reproductions, working the Grecian myths and legends over and over again in pseudo-classical lyrics, idyls, and dramas. The