434 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



ment, and by the development of new impulse to action 

 during the period of repose. The application of this 

 principle to speech, and especially to impassioned speech, 

 is sufficiently obvious. The wave of emotion rising in the 

 soul sympathetically stirs the physical system and lends 

 strength to the voice. In this swell of impassioned 

 utterance the emotion itself is momentarily exhausted, 

 and an interval of rest or lowered utterance supervenes 

 till the tide of passion again rises and produces a fresh 

 wave of physical utterance. Such unregulated alterna 

 tion of excitement and depression does not in itself possess 

 any aesthetic and rhythmical character. The agony of 

 Philoctetes, the passion of an angry woman, the violent 

 weeping of a child, are all illustrations of the rise and fall 

 of utterance under strong emotion ; yet they are the very 

 opposite of poetical, for they are not harmonious, but 

 spasmodic. Poetic expression, as we have seen, implies 

 indeed that the whole soul of the poet is full of some 

 absorbing feeling or impression, but it implies also that he 

 so controls and shapes his passion by utterance that he 

 shall appear master over his matter, not mastered by it ; 

 not sullenly and silently curbing his emotion, but mould 

 ing it and giving to it a harmonious completeness in which 

 he and others can take delight. &quot; In the very torrent, 

 tempest, and (as we may say) whirlwind of his passion, he 

 must acquire a temperance that may give it smoothness.&quot; 

 And so while the poetic enthusiasm must find its expres 

 sion in elevated utterance, that elevation is not allowed to 

 sweep on till checked by sheer exhaustion, but is regulated 

 by the intellect. For just as an emotion can be momen 

 tarily checked by the mere passionate effort of physical 

 utterance, so an effort of will concentrated on the work of 

 giving intelligent expression to poetic feeling produces a 

 similar effect. But so soon as this intelligent utterance is 

 reached, the emotional element again rises and calls for 

 new expression, and thus originates a harmonious pulsa 

 tion of emotion and thought, feeling and utterance, which 



