154 BIRDS AND POETS 



still there in the shape of the proud, haughty, and 

 manly Norman, and in many forms yet stimulates 

 the mind. 



The perception of cosmical beauty comes by a 

 vital original process. It is in some measure a crea- 

 tive act, and those works that rest upon it make 

 demands — perhaps extraordinary ones — upon the 

 reader or beholder. We regard mere surface glitter, 

 or mere verbal sweetness, in a mood entirely passive, 

 and with a pleasure entirely profitless. The beauty 

 of excellent stage scenery seems much more obvious 

 and easy of apprehension than the beauty of trees 

 and hills themselves, inasmuch as the act of associa- 

 tion in the mind is much easier and cheaper than 

 the act of original perception. 



Only the greatest works in any department afford 

 any explanation of this wonder we call nature, or 

 aid the mind in arriving at correct notions concern- 

 ing it. To copy here and there a line or a trait is 

 no explanation; but to translate nature into an- 

 other language — to bridge it to us, to repeat in 

 some sort the act of creation itself — is the final 

 and crowning triumph of poetic art. 



II 



After the critic has enumerated all the stock quali- 

 ties of the poet, as taste, fancy, melody, etc., it 

 remains to be said that unless there is something in 

 him that is living identity, something analogous to 

 the growing, pushing, reproducing forces of nature, 

 all the rest in the end pass for but little. 



