INTRODUCTION 



I saw sweet Poetry turn untroubled eyes 



On shaggy Science nosing in the grass. 



For by that way poor Poetry must pass 

 On her long pilgrimage to Paradise. 

 He snuffled, grunted, squealed ; perplexed by flies, 



Parched, weatherworn, and near of sight, alas ! 



From peering close where very little was 

 In dens secluded from the open skies. 

 But Poetry in bravery went down, 



And called his name, soft, clear, and fearlessly ; 

 Stooped low, and stroked his muzzle overgrown ; 



Refreshed his drought with dew ; wiped pure and free 



His eyes : and lo ! laughed loud for joy to see 

 In those grey deeps the azure of her own. 



WALTER DE LA MARE. 



The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the animals, the wind, and rain, 

 and sun, and stars are never strange to me ; for I am in and of and one with them ; and my flesh 

 and the soil are one, and the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, and the winds and 

 tempests and my passions are one. W. H. HUDSON. 



TV /TATTHEW ARNOLD was, I think, the first English critic to point out 

 the importance of the interpretation of Nature in literature. " The 

 grand power of poetry," he says, " is its interpretative power ; by which I 

 mean, not a power of drawing out in black and white an explanation of the 

 mystery of the universe, but the power of so dealing with things as to awaken 

 in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of our relations 

 with them." In the same essay, and in " Celtic Literature " and elsewhere, 

 he quotes passages which show more or less precisely what he means by inter- 

 pretation and especially by interpretation of Nature, and he coins the phrase 

 " natural magic " for this element in literature at its highest power. But it is 

 noticeable that he cannot illustrate his point from English prose, for it was 

 not until some time after his essay was written that any men, except Shelley in 

 " The Coliseum " and De Quincey and Coleridge in a few passages, had dealt 



