aenold's view of emeesok and caelyle 137 



prise; his ideas never suddenly leap out full-grown 

 from his brain, but slowly develop and unfold be- 

 fore you, and there are no missing links. Any given 

 thought is continuous with him, and grows and ex- 

 pands with new ramifications and radiations, from 

 year to year. This gives a wonderful consecutive- 

 ness and wholeness to his work, as well as great 

 clearness and simplicity. Yet one sometimes feels 

 as if his keen sense of form and order sometimes 

 stood between him and the highest truths. I believe 

 the notions we get from him of the scope and func- 

 tion of poetry, and of the value and significance of 

 style, are capable of revision. 



Less stringency of form is to be insisted upon, less 

 servility to the classic standards. We live in an age 

 of expansion, not of concentration, as Arnold long 

 ago said; "like the traveler in the fable, therefore, 

 we begin to wear our cloak a little more loosely." 

 In literature we are coming more and more to look 

 beyond the form into the substance; yea, into the 

 mood and temper that begat the substance. 



"The chief trait of any given poet," says a re- 

 cent authority, " is always the spirit he brings to the 

 observation of humanity and nature, — the mood out 

 of which he contemplates his subject. What kind 

 of temper and what amount of faith reports these 

 things ? " 



Of like purport is the well-known passage of 

 Sainte-Beuve, wherein, after referring to the de- 

 mands and standards of the classic age, he says that 

 for us to-day "the greatest poet is not he who has 



