50 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



own breast." vSuch is the extasy of the poet ; the prose writer never 

 forgets himself so. 



It is apparent to all that there are many different kinds of prose, 

 according to the object of the writer, but in all there is felt the con- 

 stant control of the Reason, of Logic. No matter how high the 

 flights of thought, how magnificent the expression, the whole is kept 

 under the guidance of the intellect and follows the line of argument. 

 This is prose. 



Poetic prose does not free itself altogether from this control of 

 reason, but adds to it the prophetic power which is the distinctive 

 quality of poetic thought, a happy combination of reason and imag- 

 ination. It is a significant fact that some of the greatest writers of 

 this class have at first had the intention of expressing themselves in 

 verse. Plato, Carlyle and Ruskin had this ambition, and each gave 

 up the idea mainly because he was forced to acknowledge his defi- 

 ciency in the power of rhythmical language. Yet I doubt if there are 

 many who are called poets who excel them in prophetic power. 



On the other hand we have the contrast of Poetry to Science. 

 This truer contrast is first remarked by the Lake School of Poets. 

 Coleridge expressed it in one of his conversations, and since then 

 there has been little hesitation in accepting it. Science, it is said, 

 deals with the relation of things in the universe to each other : poetry 

 with the relations of the universe to man and God. A good illustra- 

 tion of this difference can be found in the way in which a poet and a 

 scientist approach any great phenomenon. If we can suppose them 

 to see for the first time a rainbow in the sky, we find the wonder of 

 the poet leading him to seek the moral and spiritual meaning to him, 

 as did the sons and daughters of Noah : 



' ' His heart leaps up when he beholds 



A Rainbow in Ihe sky." 



The wonder of the scientist, no whit less than the other, will 

 lead him to investigate the physical causes and to reduce the phe- 

 nomenon to the action of a few laws. Each grows perhaps a little 

 intolerant of the other. \^^e read of how Keats and Lambe proposed 

 the toast " Confusion to the memory of Newton," because he had 

 destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism. A 

 still more striking illustration of the narrowness of the purely scientific 

 mind is offered by Balzas in 'The Search for the Absolute,' as 



