THE ART-PRINCIPLE IN POETRY 193 



That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters 

 That dote upon each other, friends to man, 

 Living together under the same roof. 

 And never can be sundered without tears. 



For we must say, rather, that beauty, truth, and 

 good stand in an eternal mutual necessity ; neither 

 of them has any real existence at all, apart from 

 the others. Though each has a quality peculiarly 

 its own, so that they are all real in a distinction 

 that is irreducible, yet this distinction is in the 

 form of their being, and not in its contents ; for 

 neither of them can complete its own idea except 

 as it gathers the two others in itself. Beauty that 

 does not embrace truth and goodness is no com- 

 plete beauty, but only the rudiment of beauty ; 

 truth that does not include good and beauty is 

 only the fragment of truth ; and goodness that 

 does not compass truth and beauty is only an 

 arrested goodness. There is between them a triune 

 relation which might well be expressed by taking 

 the stanzas of Goethe on Art, as translated by 

 Carlyle, and enlarging their sense: — 



As all Nature's myriad changes still one changeless Power 

 proclaim, 



So thro' Thought's wide kingdom ranges one vast Meaning, e'er 

 the same : 



This is Truth — eternal Reason — that in Beauty takes its dress. 



And, serene thro' time and season, stands complete in Right- 

 eousness. 

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