SUGGESTIVENESS 105 



his text, the fisherman with his nets, all are more 

 or less symbolical and appeal to the imagination. 



In both prose and poetry, there is the suggestive- 

 ness of language used in a vivid, imaginative way, 

 and the suggestiveness of words redolent of human 

 association, words of deep import, as friend, home, 

 love, marriage. 



To me Shakespeare's sonnets are the most sugges- 

 tive sonnets in the language, because they so abound 

 in words, images, allusions drawn from real life; 

 they are the product of a mind vividly acted upon 

 by near-by things, that uses language steeped in the 

 common experience of mankind. The poet drew his 

 material not from the strange and the remote, but, 

 as it were, from the gardens and thoroughfares of 

 life. Does not that poetry or prose work touch us 

 the most nearly that deals with that with which we 

 are most familiar? One thing that separates the 

 minor poet from the major is that the thoughts and 

 words of the minor poet are more of the nature of 

 asides, or of the exceptional ; he does not take in the 

 common and universal ; we are not familiar with the 

 points of view that so agitate him; and he has not 

 the power to make them real to us. I read poems 

 every day that provoke the thought, "Well, that is 

 all news to me. I do not know that heaven or that 

 earth, those men or those women," all is so shad- 

 owy, fantastic, and unreal. But when you enter the 

 world of the great poets you find yourself upon solid 



