s more righteous, than the
one now in vogue among poetasters, by honest faith in God....

Yes, Pope knew, as well as Wordsworth and our "Naturalisti," that no
physical fact was so mean or coarse as to be below the dignity of
poetry--when in its right place. He could draw a pathos and sublimity
out of the dirty inn-chamber, such as Wordsworth never elicited from
tubs and daffodils--because he could use them according to the rules of
art, which are the rules of sound reason and of true taste....

The real cause of the modern vagueness is rather to be found in shallow
and unsound culture, and in that inability, or carelessness about seeing
any object clearly, which besets our poets just now; as the cause of
antique clearness lies in the nobler and healthier manhood, in the
severer and more methodic habits of thought, the sounder philosophic and
critical training which enabled Spenser and Milton to draw up a state
paper, or to discourse deep metaphysics, with the same manful possession
of their subject which gives grace and completeness to the _Penseroso_
or the _Epithalmion_. And if our poets have their doubts, they should
remember, that those to whom doubt and enquiry are real and stern, are
not inclined to sing about them till they can sing poems of triumph over
them. There has no temptation taken our modern poets save that which is
common to man--the temptation of wishing to make the laws of the
universe and of art fit them, as they do not feel inclined to make
themselves fit the laws, or care to find them out....

The "poetry of doubt," however pretty, would stand us in little stead if
we were threatened with a second Armada. It will conduce little to the
valour, "virtues," manhood of any Englishman to be informed by any poet,
even in the most melodious verse, illustrated by the most startling and
pan-cosmic metaphors, "See what a highly organised and peculiar
stomach-ache I have had! Does it not prove indisputably that I am not as
other men are?" What gospel there can be in such a message to any honest
man who has either to till the earth, plan a railroad, colonise Australia,
or fight the despots, is hard to discover. Hard indeed to discover how
this most practical, and therefore most epical of ages, is to be "set to
music," when all those who talk about so doing persist obstinately in
poring, with introverted eyes, over the state of their own digestion, or
creed.

What man wants, what art wants, perhaps what the m