Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/312

282 child Clairon, as she refused to learn to sew, cry out under brutal punishment: "Kill me! You had better do so, for if you don't I shall be an actress!" Dickens declared that he did not invent his work: "I see it," he said, "and write it down." Sidney Lanier, in nervous crises, would seem to hear rich music. It was an inherited gift. Thus equipped with a rhythmical sense beyond that of other poets, he turned to poetry as to the supreme art. Now, the finer and more complex the gift, the longer exercise is needful for its full mastery. He strove to make poetry do what painting has done better, and to make it do what only music hitherto has done. If he could have lived three lives, he would have adjusted the relations of these arts as far as possible to his own satisfaction. I regard his work, striking as it is, as merely tentative from his own point of view. It was as if a discoverer should sail far enough to meet the floating rock-weed, the strayed birds, the changed skies, that betoken land ahead; should even catch a breath of fragrance wafted from