Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/316

286 While this is a bit of Preraphaelite mosaic, it is not too much to say of the essentially poetic soul that at times it becomes, in Henry More's language,—

that it seems to have bathed, like Ayesha, in central and eternal flame; or, after some preëxistence, to have undergone the lustration to which, in the sixth Æneid, we find the beclouded spirits subjected:—

At such times its conclusions are as much more infallible than those worked out by logic as is the off-hand pistol-shot of the expert, whose weapon has become a part of his hand, than the sight taken along the barrel. It makes the leopard's leap, without reflection and without miss. I think it was Leigh Hunt who pointed out that feeling rarely makes the blunders which thought makes. Applied to life, we know that woman's intuition is often wiser than man's wit.

The clearness of the poet's or artist's vision is so The artist's noble discontent. much beyond his skill to reproduce it, and so increases with each advance, that he never quite contents himself with his work.