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If other poets of our time show more intellectual strength than he, are they, perchance, given sometimes to adulterating their poetry with ratiocination and didactic preachments such as were better left to the proseman? Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the question.
Is it that the convincement of him who works in poetic forms is, though not necessarily, yet most perfectly achieved by a faithful record of the emotion aroused in his own soul by the impact upon his senses of the external world, while the convincement of the proseman is, though not necessarily, yet most perfectly achieved by a faithful record and picture of the external world itself?
But, though the accompaniment of a musical instrument be frequently dispensed with, the true Poet does not therefore abandon his privilege distinct from that of the mere Proseman; He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own. Let us come now to the consideration of the words Fancy and Imagination, as employed in the classification of the following Poems.
Even the poet—he who, dealing as he does with essential and elemental qualities only, is not so hampered as the proseman in these matters—is beginning also to feel the tyranny of documents, as we see notably in Swinburne’s ‘Bothwell,’ which consists very largely of documents transfigured into splendid verse.
We have hitherto spoken of work done in the dedicated life of religion: to-day we direct our attention to the work of a great layman; the first English layman whom we know to have been a great power in literature; less as a "maker," poet or proseman, than as an opener out to "makers" of precious store; a helper and encourager; a fellow-student; a learner and a teacher of whom it could be said, as Chaucer says of his Clerk of Oxford, "gladly would he learn and gladly teach."
Poet and proseman both gave voice to her delight. Hear this new note of exultation born of England's victory on the sea: As God hath combined the sea and land into one globe, so their mutual assistance is necessary to secular happiness and glory. The sea covereth one-half of this patrimony of man.
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