Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/76

46 The creative insight, according to its degree, is Genius, its recognition and its scientific vindication. allied with, if not the source of, the mysterious endowment named genius, which humdrum intellects have sought to disallow, claiming that it lies chiefly in one of its frequent attributes,—industry,—but which the wisdom of generations has indubitably recognized. The antique and idealistic notion of this gift is given in "Ion": "A poet ... is unable to compose poetry until he becomes inspired and is out of his sober senses, and his imagination is no longer under his control; for he does not compose by art, but through a divine power." The modern and scientific rendering is that of the exact investigator, Hartmann, who traces this power of genius to its inmost cell, and classifies it as the spontaneous, involuntary force of the untrammelled soul,—in precise terms, "the activity and efflux of the Intellect freed from the domination of the Conscious Will." Whichever statement you accept,—and I see no reason why the two are not perfectly concordant,—here is the apparently superhuman gift which drew from Sophocles that cry of wonder, "Æschylus does what is right without knowing it."

As an outcome of genius producing the semblance '''3. Poetry as an expression of the beautiful,''' of what its insight discovers, poetry aims to convey beauty and truth in their absolute simplicity of kind, but limitless variety of guise and adaptation. The poet's vision of these is shared to some extent by all of us, else