he inner mind so much that the outer
mind--the rational understanding--hardly likes to consider them nicely
or to discuss them sceptically. For these dubious themes an ornate or
complex style is needful. Classical art speaks out what it has to say
plainly and simply. Pure style cannot hesitate; it describes in
concisest outline what is, as it is. If a poet really believes in
presentiments he can speak out in pure style. One who could have been
a poet--one of the few in any age of whom one can say certainly that
they could have been, and have not been--has spoken thus:

When Heaven sends sorrow,
Warnings go first,
Lest it should burst
With stunning might
On souls too bright
To fear the morrow.

Can science bear us
To the hid springs
Of human things?
Why may not dream,
Or thought's day-gleam,
Startle, yet cheer us?

Are such thoughts fetters,
While faith disowns
Dread of earth's tones,
Recks but Heaven's call,
And on the wall,
Reads but Heaven's letters?

But if a poet is not sure whether presentiments are true or not true;
if he wishes to leave his readers in doubt; if he wishes an atmosphere
of indistinct illusion and of moving shadow, he must use the romantic
style, the style of miscellaneous adjunct, the style 'which shirks,
not meets' your intellect, the style which as you are scrutinizing
disappears.

Nor is this all, or even the principal lesson, which _Enoch Arden_ may
suggest to us, of the use of ornate art. That art is the appropriate
art for an _unpleasing type_. Many of the characters of real life, if
brought distinctly, prominently, and plainly before the mind, as they
really are, if shown in their inner nature, their actual essence, are
doubtless very unpleasant. They would be horrid to meet and horrid to
think of. We fear it must be owned that Enoch Arden is this kind of
person. A dirty sailor who did _not_ go home to his wife is not an
agreeable being: a varnish must be put on him to make him shine. It is
true that he acts rightly; that he is very good. But such is human
nature that it finds a little tameness in mere morality. Mere virtue
belongs to a charity school-girl, and has a taint of the catechism.
All of us feel this, though most of us are too timid, too scrupulous,
too anxious about the virtue of others, to speak out. We are ashamed
of our nature in this respect, but it is not