of the man of science ...
carrying the sensation into the midst of the objects of the science
itself." And we can suppose our champion willing to abide in that faith,
because "the master hath said it."

But it is our present concern to go somewhat more closely to the heart
of the question, to consider without bias how much truth there really is
in this prediction that poetry must of necessity decline with the
advance of science and the "progress" of society.

Of the preliminary question what _is_ poetry, we may spare the
discussion. If there are those who are misled by words and who will
insist that poetry is simply identical with good expression in verse, it
will be impossible to say anything helpful to the sect. Nor, indeed,
will anything be needed, for they will entertain no apprehensions about
the future. Does not even Macaulay tell them that there will be
"abundance of verses, even of good ones"? With those, again, who accept
Macaulay's unspeakably miserable definition of poetry as "the art of
employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the
imagination" we shall find no common footing. Nor need we dispute with
those who follow the thin dry criticism of Addison or Johnson, and who
imagine the poetical elements in poetry to consist of figures of speech,
images, and technical devices. It may well be, as Macaulay predicts,
that the enlightened world will indeed resent and cease to practise
"illusions" on the imagination, or on any other faculty. It may be the
case also that the stock poetical diction and mechanism of Addison's
time, with the "Delias" and "Phyllises," "nymphs," "swains," "lyres,"
and other tinsel elegancies in which it delights, will be--nay, are
already--the abomination of a discerning world. But if by "poetry" is
meant what should be meant--the vivid, impassioned and rhythmical
expression of rare emotions and exquisite thoughts, the revelation by
genius of the ideal and spiritual side of things, the crystallizing of
the floating and fugitive sentiments and aspirations of the contemporary
mind into clear aim and purpose by words of luminous beauty; if there is
meant a power which seizes and utters subtle truths "of man, of nature,
and of human life"; if there is meant the urgent desire and the power to
body forth by the imagination in exquisite language the shapes of things
unknown, things of beauty, glamour, pathos, or refreshment; if, as
Wordsworth once more puts it, "the objects