SCIENCE AND POETRY 171 



intercourse with one another. It is science. Proverbs are the small 

 blossoms on the large tree of human experience. There exist odes to 

 the skylark in every language spoken where this bird is known. No two 

 of them are alike. But all descriptions of the skylark by ornithologists 

 agree in the main. Carlyle often expressed disgust for "silly poetry." 

 Yet he generally dealt with the facts or the reputed facts of history from 

 such a strikingly individual point of view that a great deal of what he 

 wrote belongs to the realm of the imagination as much as to the domain 

 of history. He could not get away from himself, — probably did not 

 want to. " Eomola " or " Jane Eyre " deals with types and not with in- 

 dividuals. Their authors probably had some one in view for almost 

 every character they introduced. But they are disguised. On the other 

 hand, some of Carlyle's heroes are historical characters and bear well- 

 known names. Nevertheless, they are almost as much unlike the fa- 

 miliar men and women of the ordinary text-book as if they belonged 

 to the realm of fiction. The type never exists in unadulterated form. 

 Very few every-day people are interesting. Consequently, when novel- 

 ists bring them before their readers they exaggerate both their virtues 

 and their vices in order to make them attractive. Dickens has a great 

 deal to say about schoolmasters and schools. It is nevertheless much to 

 be doubted whether the men and women he describes and the conditions 

 as he represents them existed anywhere in England. By taking here and 

 there from this person and that a trait or a personal peculiarity that 

 best suited his purpose he makes composite portraits and portrays char- 

 acters with such verisimilitude that we forget that they are largely the 

 creations of his imagination. Albeit, the imagination is a wonderful 

 and mysterious faculty. The orator is to some extent an artificial prod- 

 uct; the poet is born. Unlike the intellect and the will, the imagina- 

 tion can not be trained. Dickens was almost without education; 

 yet he portrays in his works fifteen hundred and fifty characters with 

 more or less fulness of detail, while the number of names of places, so- 

 cieties, literary works, familiar persons and signs exceed two hundred. 

 Balzac's works contains two thousand biographies, individual, distinct 

 and, for the most part, complete. He usually takes each person at his 

 birth and does not lose sight of him until his death. He also knows 

 what the spirit of the country was in their time, the condition of the 

 provinces and the trade to which the man belonged. He even knows 

 what his income is, what taxes he paid, and the state of his culture. Yet 

 Balzac's productive years hardly exceeded a score and Dickens died 

 before reaching old age. In rare cases, but probably in more than is 

 generally known, the poet and the scientist are combined in the same 

 person. The Bev. C. L. Dodgson was a mathematician of considerable 

 ability and expected his fame to rest on what he had done in this de- 

 partment of knowledge. Now hardly anybody cares for his mathe- 



