Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/51

Rh The chief contributions of the Lake School to our definition are the recognition of the imagination and the antithesis of science to poetry. The pessimist Schopenhauer, who wrote like a musician on music, like a poet on poetry, yet with wholly impassive judgment, also avows that poetry is "the art of exciting by words the power of the imagination," and that it must "show by example what life and the world are."

From the attributes of invention, passion, and imagination may perhaps be deduced what The Platonic conception. seems to others the specific quality of the poet, the very quintessence of his gift. What should I mean, save that which Aristotle's master considered the element productive of all others and a direct endowment from heaven,— Inspiration. the Inspiration governing creative, impassioned, imaginative art? The poet's soul was, according to Plato, in harmonic relation with the soul of the universe. It is true that in the "Republic" he supplies Aristotle with a technical basis; Plato, in "The Republic." furthermore, as an idealist playing at government, he is more sternly utilitarian than even the man of affairs. The epic and dramatic makers of "imitative history" are falsifiers, dangerous for their divine power of exciting the passions and unsettling the minds of ordinary folk. He admires a poet, and would even crown him, but feels bound to escort