LITEEAKY VALUES 19 



is much more of the substance of character, of pa- 

 triotism, of strenuous New England life, in the one 

 than in the other. " Snow-Bound " is a metrical 

 transcript from experience ; not a creation of the 

 imagination, but a touched-up copy from the mem- 

 ory. We cannot say this of " The Bells " or " The 

 Eaven," or of the work of Milton or Keats or Ten- 

 nyson. Whittier sings what he feels ; it all has a 

 root in his own experience. The great poet feigns 

 the emotion and makes it real to us. 



We complain of much current verse that it has 

 no feeling. The trouble is not that the poets feign, 

 but that the feigning is feeble ; it begets no emo- 

 tion in us. It simulates, but does not stimulate. 



It is not Wordsworth's art that makes him great ; 

 it is his profound poetic emotion when in the pre- 

 sence of simple, common things. Tennyson's art, or 

 Swinburne's art, is much finer, but the poetic emo- 

 tion back of it is less profound and elemental. 



Emerson's art is crude, but the stress of his poetic 

 emotion is great ; the song is burdened with pro- 

 found meanings to our moral and spiritual nature. 

 Poe has no such burden ; there is not one crumb of 

 the bread of life in him, but there is plenty of the 

 elixir of the imagination. 



This passion for art, so characteristic of the Old 

 World, is seen in its full force in such a writer as 

 Elaubert. Elaubert was a devotee of the doctrine 

 of art for art's sake. He cared nothing for mere 

 authors, but only for " writers ; " the work must be 

 the conscious and deliberate product of the author's 



