Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/231

Rh convey their suggestion of what should and will be done. There is a certain lack of Sincerity. sincerity, despite their artistic beauty, in the foreign and antique exploits of many poets and artists; and lack of sincerity is always Jack of truth. But, while they should favor their own time, they must avoid expression of its transient passions and characteristics. Seize upon the essential, lasting traits, and let the others be accessory. If the general spirit of the time be not embodied, a work is soon out of date.

Against all this, the widest freedom is permitted to that chartered libertine,—the poet's But nothing is forbidden to the imagination, and a poet may follow his bent. imagination. Nature and the soul being the same forever, we care nothing for Shakespeare's anachronisms and impossible geography; we find nothing strange and unnatural in his assembly of mediæval fays and antique heroes and amazons, of English clowns and mechanics in Grecian garb, all commingled to enact a fantastic marvel of comedy and poesy in the palace and forests of a "Midsummer Night's Dream." We confess the poet's witchcraft, and ourselves are of the blithe company,—denizens of an enchanted land, where everything has the truth of possibility. A conception is not vitiated by the most novel form it may assume, provided that this be artistic and not artificial. For art, as Goethe and Haydon have said, is art because it is not nature. That method is most true which, invoking the force of nature, directs it