purpose. It is enough to refer any reader who does not already know it, to what is the most eloquent plea of the past mid century on behalf of the exalted functions of the poet. Having arrived at Browning, we have come as far as, allowing for the proverbial difficulty of dealing with contemporary poets and critics, our subject may safely take us. As it is, we have followed it to the point, perhaps, where it may most safely be left;-at the point of stimulus, and not of exhaustion. If, indeed, it but provide the stimulus to that finer sentiment and quicker interest, upon which the last appreciation of poetry depends, it is as much as we need desire. And so, too, with the more formal writings of the poets, which follow in our text. We cannot expect, as we said, to find there the comprehensive formulary, the whole philosophy, of the subject,-a subject which will never be fully exploited until we have the impossible: a perfect poet and a perfect philosopher rolled into one. This, in spite of Coleridge, who has said, "No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher." And in an untechnical sense this is true. But the outward and final processes of the two are, and always must be, different. The poet adopts the letter of philosophy, as well as its spirit, it would seem, witness Coleridge himself, with some risk to his own proper art; he cannot serve two masters. What we do find, then, in these contributions by Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, Milton, and their successors, is a set of testimonies not at all scientific, but such as they are, making a much more delightful and eloquent companion to the poetic anthology than any more formal body of criticism could do. Taken in themselves, severally, they are full of wise and fine things, said in a way not readily to be forgotten. Taken historically, they touch in the most interesting and telling fashion the periods in English poetry, from Chaucer to Spenser, and on through the Elizabethan golden age to the beginning of this century, when Wordsworth and Coleridge were still in their heat of youth, and when Shelley and Keats were still potential. To those who love these poets most, who care most for their ideals, this little book ought to be the one indispensable book of devotion, the credo of the poetic faith. It revives, like nothing else in criticism, the superb belief of youth in poetry and the other world of the imagination. It gives us back our early faith in the destiny and divine right of our Poet the Monarch," as Sidney calls him. And it sets up, once and again, the eternal standards, by which alone English poetry can hope to sustain the great traditions of Spenser and Milton, Keats and Wordsworth, and the other masters of its House of Fame. September 1894. E. R. CHAUCER (1340-1400) Invocation and Lines upon the Muse from the Third Book of GOD of science and of light, And kisse hit, for hit is thy tree. Ful moche prees of folk ther nas, That maad was of a rubee al, That never formed by nature That with hir feete she therthe reighte, But, lord! the perrie and the richesse I herde aboute her trone y-songe, And hir eighte sustren eke, That in hir face semen meke; And evermo, eternally, They songe of Fame, as tho herde I : "Heried be thou and thy name, Goddesse of renoun and of fame!" In Cuddie is set out the perfecte paterne of a Poete whiche, finding no maintenaunce of his state and studies, complayneth of the contempte of Poetrie, and the causes thereof: Specially having bene in all ages, and even amongst the most barbarous, alwayes of singular accoumpt and honor, and being indede so worthy and commendable an arte; or rather no arte, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct not to bee gotten by laboure and learning,but adorned with both; and poured into the witte by a certain 'Ev0ovolaouds and celestiall inspiration, as the Author hereof els where at large discourseth in his |