366 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



negative aspect or place held by poetry in the exact interpre- 

 tation of nature, as being of too narrow a phase, I reply that 

 I am simply judging the claims of poetry on their own merits, 

 and as set forth by no mean advocate of their power. But 

 poetry, according to Principal Shairp, deals immediately 

 with a certain " truth of the External World." This, put " in 

 the simplest way," says our author, "is Beauty," and "the 

 Poet is the man to whom is given the eye that sees this more 

 instinctively, the heart that feels it more intensely, than other 

 men do; and who has power to express it, and bring it 

 home to his fellow-men." Principal Shairp is here speaking 

 in the truest of terms, and appeals directly to our own 

 innate experiences, when the moods of nature, as reflected 

 from the pages of the poet, or directly from the fair face 

 of wood and sky, hill and dale, river or sea, have reached us 

 and touched our hearts. The question "What is beauty?" 

 is one which Professor Shairp answers shortly in the phrase, 

 that certain qualities and combinations of objects and laws 

 of the outer world, transformed by the aesthetic and imagina- 

 tive faculties, give rise to the sense or perception of beauty, 

 very much, indeed, as vibrations of the air, received by the 

 tympanum of the ear, and modified by the inner ear, and 

 transmitted to the brain, give rise to the perception of 

 sound. Beauty, in this view, which has all the merits of 

 a sensible explanation, is simply the modification by special 

 powers of mind, of particular sense-impressions, derived 

 from the outer world. The justice of this view, also, is 

 well seen when we find that it makes due allowance for the 

 relative nature of the beauty-sense. Why does the same 

 view of nature present the brightest aspect to one man, and 

 the dullest prospect to another ? Why does the greenness 

 of trees or the fairness of the seascape charm one and fail 

 to impress another ? I reply, because the beauty-sense, and 

 the special nervous mechanism implied in its possession, is 

 actively developed in the former and absent in the latter. 

 To the former, nature is appealing as to a poet; by the 

 latter the appeal is met with an unheeding obtuseness to 



