Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/42

12 that which is bad is easily known. If there be a mute and to-be-glorious Milton here, so much the better. And for all of us, I should think, there can be no choicer quest, and none more refining, than, with the Muse before us, to seek the very well-spring and to discover the processes of her "wisdom married to immortal verse."

We owe to the artist's feeling that his gift is innate, Artistic reserve. and that it does produce "an illusion on the eye of the mind" which, he fears, too curious analysis may dispel: to this we doubtless owe his general reluctance to talk with definiteness concerning his art. Often you may as well ask a Turk after his family, or a Hindu priest concerning his inner shrine. I have put to several minstrels the direct question, "What is poetry?" without obtaining a categorical reply. One of them, indeed, said, "I can't tell you just now, but if you need a first-class example of it, I'll refer you to my volume of 'Lyrics and Madrigals.'" But when they do give us chips from their workshop,—the table-talk of poets, the stray sentences in their letters,—these, like the studio-hints of masters, are both curt and precious, and emphatically refute Macaulay's statement that good poets are bad critics. They incline us rather to believe with Shenstone that "every good poet includes a critic; the reverse" (as he added) "will not hold."

Even a layman shares the artist's hesitation to