ion in numerous language. A thought may be
poetical, and yet not poetry; it may be a sort of mother liquor, holding
in solution the poetical element, but waiting and wanting its
precipitation,--its concentration into the bright and compacted crystal.
It is the very blossom and fragrancy and bloom of all human thoughts,
passions, emotions, language; having for its immediate object--its very
essence--pleasure and delectation rather than truth; but springing from
truth, as the flower from its fixed and unseen root. To use the words of
Puttenham in reference to Sir Walter Raleigh, poetry is a lofty,
insolent (unusual) and passionate thing.

It is not philosophy, it is not science, it is not morality, it is not
religion, any more than red is or ever can be blue or yellow, or than
one thing can ever be another; but it feeds on, it glorifies and exalts,
it impassionates them all. A poet will be the better of all the wisdom,
and all the goodness, and all the science, and all the talent he can
gather into himself, but _qua_ poet he is a minister and an interpreter
of {to kalon}, and of nothing else. Philosophy and poetry are not
opposites, but neither are they convertibles. They are twin sisters;--in
the words of Augustine:--"PHILOCALIA _et_ PHILOSOPHIA _prope similiter
cognominatae sunt, et quasi gentiles inter se videri volunt et sunt. Quid
est enim Philosophia? amor sapientiae. Quid Philocalia? amor
pulchritudinis. Germanae igitur istae sunt prorsus, et eodem parente
procreatae._" Fracastorius beautifully illustrates this in his
"_Naugerius, sive De Poetica Dialogus_." He has been dividing writers,
or composers as he calls them, into historians, or those who record
appearances; philosophers, who seek out causes; and poets, who perceive
and express _veras pulchritudines rerum, quicquid maximum et magnificum,
quicquid pulcherrimum, quicquid dulcissimum_; and as an example, he
says, if the historian describe the ongoings of this visible universe, I
am taught; if the philosopher announce the doctrine of a spiritual
essence pervading and regulating all things, I admire; but if the poet
take up the same theme, and sing--

"_Principio caelum ac terras camposque liquentes
Lucentemque globum lunae, titaniaque astra,
Spiritus intus alit; totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet._"

"_Si inquam, eandem rem, hoc pacto referat mihi, non admirabor solum,
sed adamabo: et divinum nescio quid, in animu