AND IN PROSE 275 



He who would do such a thing, however eminent 

 in his own art of music, is ignorant of the meaning 

 of poetry at its best. That which is perfect is perfect 

 and cannot be bettered. You cannot improve a statue 

 of Phidias by dressing it in silks and embroidery. 



This same effect of great music is produced by some 

 passages in blank verse, such as that one in Paradise 

 Lost which makes the sublime dream of heaven and 

 earth less to us than the poet's own heart-cry — the 

 revelation of a secret bitterness when he laments 

 his blindness. There are also passages that stir us 

 like great and solemn music in Keats and Words- 

 worth, and in Thomson's Seasons, though the 

 Georgians will snort at my saying it. I go even lower 

 and find a passage in Akenside's Pleasures, which 

 are nothing but pains to most modern readers. There 

 is also a passage in so inferior a poet as Alexander 

 Smith which lives in my memory like great music. 



In prose, too, there are such passages, and one 

 cannot but recall the English Opium-Eater's awful 

 dream with its unforgettable conclusion — its rever- 

 berated everlasting farewells, from which the dreamer 

 awoke to cry out aloud, "I will sleep no more!" 



To return to the starting-point: when the two 

 distinct supreme arts of poetry and music do actually 

 meet and become one, is when both (as arts) are at 

 their lowest, when the music is nearest to primitive 

 music, and the poetry is the lowliest, the simplest, 

 the nearest to emotional speech. It is only then (to 

 resume the allegory) that these two queenly ones, 

 remembering their past sisterhood, put off their 



