54 JOURNAL AND PROCFLEDINGS. 



These moments of inspiration come mysteriously and unbidden, 

 but not unconditionally. The conditions are that the mind should 

 dwell on the subject long and lovingly. 



" If Thought and Love desert us, from that day 

 Let us break off all commerce with the Muse ; 



With Thought and Love companions of our way, 

 Whate'er the senses take or may refuse'. 



The mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews 

 Of inspiration on the humblest lay." 



We must by contemplation put ourselves in the way of inspira- 

 tions. There is no habit more strongly emphasized by the wise 

 men than contemplation. David in the fourth Psalm commands to 

 '■'■commune with your own heart on your bed and be still;'''' and 

 again, " be still and know that I am God." It is this virtue of silence 

 which Carlyle holds in such reverence as the mother of truth and 

 insight. 



The faculty by which the poet creates his poetry is the imagin- 

 ation. What imagination is has been well expressed by Prin. Shairp : 

 " Imagination is not, as has sometimes been conceived, a faculty of 

 falsehood or deception, calling up merely fictitious or fantastic views. 

 It is pre-eminently a truthful and truth-seeing faculty, perceiving 

 subtle aspects of truth, hidden relations, far-reaching analogies, which 

 find no entrance to us by any other inlet. It is the power which 

 vitalizes all knowledge ; which makes the dead abstract and the dead 

 concrete meet, and by their meeting live ; which suffers not truth to 

 dwell by itself in one compartment of the mind, but carries it home 

 through our whole being — understanding, affections, will." 



There are two ways in which the imagination works: (i) by 

 presenting to us in concrete outhne the forms of things not present ; 

 (2) by adding to material things a spirituality which they do not 

 possess in themselves. The first is well described by Wordsworth 

 in his sonnet on the Inner Vision, with a hint of the second : 



" Most sweet it is, with unuplifted eyes 

 To pace the ground, if path be there or none. 

 While a fair region round the traveller lies 

 Which he forbears again to look upon, 

 Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, 

 The work of fancy, or some happy tone 

 Of meditation, slipping in between 

 The beauty coming and the beauty gone." 



