Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/259

Rh be remembered that its exhibitors, accumulating wealth, promote the future structures of The executive Imagination. the artist and poet. In the Old World this has been accomplished through the instrumentality of central governments. In a democracy the individual imagination has the liberty, the duty, of free play and achievement. Therefore, we say that in this matter our republicanism is on trial; that, with a forecast more exultant, as it is with respect to our own future, than that of any people on earth, our theory is wrong unless through private impulse American foundations in art, learning, humanity, are not even more continuous and munificent than those resulting in other countries from governmental promotion.

As for the poetic imagination, as distinguished from that of the man of affairs, if it cannot Imagination of the poet. parcel out the earth, it can enable us to "get along just as well without it,"—and this by furnishing a substitute at will. There is no statement of its magic so apt as that of our master magician. It "bodies forth the forms of things unknown," and through the poet's pen

I seldom refer to Shakespeare in these lectures, since we all instinctively resort to him as to nature itself; his text being not only the chief Shakespeare the preëminent exemplar. illustration of each phrase that may arise, but also, like nature, presenting all phases in