ied lightness which is seen in Hamlet,[32] addresses the
spirit with the simple, startled words:--

Elpenor! How camest thou under the shadowy darkness? Hast
thou come faster on foot than I in my black ship?

[32] 'Well said, old mole! can'st work i' the ground so
fast?'

Which Pope renders thus:--

O, say, what angry power Elpenor led
To glide in shades, and wander with the dead?
How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined,
Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?

I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in the
nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! And yet how is it
that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been pleasant
to us in the other instances?

Sec. 7. For a very simple reason. They are not a _pathetic_ fallacy at
all, for they are put into the mouth of the wrong passion--a passion
which never could possibly have spoken them--agonized curiosity.
Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter; and the very last thing
his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest in
anywise what was _not_ a fact. The delay in the first three lines, and
conceit in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the most frightful
discord in music. No poet of true imaginative power could possibly
have written the passage.[33]

[33] It is worth while comparing the way a similar question
is put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats:--

He wept, and his bright tears
Went trickling down the golden bow he held.
Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood;
While from beneath some cumb'rous boughs hard by,
With solemn step, an awful goddess came.
And there was purport in her looks for him,
Which he with eager guess began to read:
Perplexed the while, melodiously he said,
'_How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?_'

Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some
sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy has no
discord in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without farther
questioning, I will endeavour to state the main bearings of this
matter.

Sec. 8. The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as I said
above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully
with what is before them or upon them; borne away, or overclouded, or
over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or less