cerity in general of the greatest early poets, such as Homer and
Chaucer, who flourished before the existence of a 'literary world',
and were not perplexed by a heap of notions and opinions, or by doubts
how emotion ought to be expressed. The greatest of their successors
never write equally to the purpose, except when they can dismiss
everything from their minds but the like simple truth. In the
beautiful poem of _Sir Eger, Sir Graham and Sir Gray-Steel_ (see it in
Ellis's _Specimens_, or Laing's _Early Metrical Tales_), a knight
thinks himself disgraced in the eyes of his mistress:--

Sir Eger said, 'If it be so,
Then wot I well I must forgo
Love-liking, and manhood, all clean!'
_The water rush'd out of his een!_

Sir Gray-Steel is killed:

Gray-Steel into his death thus thraws[26]
He _walters[27] and the grass up draws;_

* * * * *

_A little while then lay he still
(Friends that him saw, liked full ill)
And bled into his armour bright._

[26] throes?

[27] welters,--throws himself about.

The abode of Chaucer's _Reeve_, or Steward, in the _Canterbury Tales_,
is painted in two lines, which nobody ever wished longer:

His wonning[28] was full fair upon an heath,
With greeny trees yshadowed was his place.

[28] dwelling.

Every one knows the words of Lear, 'most _matter-of-fact_, most
melancholy.'

Pray, do not mock me;
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upwards:
Not an hour more, nor less; and, to deal plainly
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

It is thus, by exquisite pertinence, melody, and the implied power of
writing with exuberance, if need be, that beauty and truth become
identical in poetry, and that pleasure, or at the very worst, a balm
in our tears, is drawn out of pain.

It is a great and rare thing, and shows a lovely imagination, when the
poet can write a commentary, as it were, of his own, on such sufficing
passages of nature, and be thanked for the addition. There is an
instance of this kind in Warner, an old Elizabethan poet, than which I
know nothing sweeter in the world. He is speaking of Fair Rosamond,
and of a blow given her by Queen Eleanor.

With that she dash'd her on the lips,
_So dyed double red:
Hard was the heart that gave the blow,
Soft were those lips that bled._

There are different kinds and degrees of imaginat