138 LITERARY VALUES 



human life. On the other hand, such a work as 

 Schiller's " Eobbers," or Goethe's " Werther," seems 

 to us like an empty shell picked up on the shore, the 

 life entirely gone out of it. One can see why Poe 

 is looked upon by foreign critics as outranking any 

 of our more popular New England poets. It is be- 

 cause his work has more of the ubiquitous character 

 of true art, is less pledged to moral and special ends, 

 less the result of personal tastes and attractions, and 

 more the pure flame of the unpledged sesthetic na- 

 ture. The " Eaven " and " The Bells " have that 

 play, that scorn of personal ends, that potential spir- 

 itual energy, of great art. Poe does not increase 

 our stock of ideas or widen the sphere of our sym- 

 pathies. He was a conjurer with words. As a poet 

 he used language for the music he could evoke from 

 it. What is the mental content of his "Annabel 

 Lee " ? It is as vague and shadowy as its angels 

 and demons, its sepulchres and seraphim, and its 

 kingdom by the sea. 



Is it Coleridge who tells of an artist who al- 

 ways copied his wife's legs in his pictures, and 

 thereby won great fame ? The creative touch it is 

 that marks the artist. He smites the rocks, and a 

 fountain gushes forth. Tennyson has the artist 

 nature Jn greater measure than Wordsworth, a more 

 flexible receptive spirit, though he never attains to 

 the homely pathos or the moral grandeur of the 

 latter. Yet individual convictions and attractions 

 played a less part in his poetry. Wordsworth 

 gathered the harvest of his own feelings and ex- 



