because it swept into the
poet's vision a whole new universe of infinite and eternal things; it
was the discovery of the Unknown. We are still under the spell of _The
Ancient Mariner_; and poetry to us means, primarily, something which
suggests, by means of words, mysteries and infinitudes. Thus, music and
imagination seem to us the most essential qualities of poetry, because
they are the most potent means by which such suggestions may be invoked.
But the eighteenth century knew none of these things. To Lord
Chesterfield and to Pope, to Prior and to Horace Walpole, there was
nothing at all strange about the world; it was charming, it was
disgusting, it was ridiculous, and it was just what one might have
expected. In such a world, why should poetry, more than anything else,
be mysterious? No! Let it be sensible; that was enough.

The new edition of the _Lives_, which Dr. Birkbeck Hill prepared for
publication before his death, and which has been issued by the Clarendon
Press, with a brief Memoir of the editor, would probably have astonished
Dr. Johnson. But, though the elaborate erudition of the notes and
appendices might have surprised him, it would not have put him to
shame. One can imagine his growling scorn of the scientific
conscientiousness of the present day. And indeed, the three tomes of Dr.
Hill's edition, with all their solid wealth of information, their
voluminous scholarship, their accumulation of vast research, are a
little ponderous and a little ugly; the hand is soon wearied with the
weight, and the eye is soon distracted by the varying types, and the
compressed columns of the notes, and the paragraphic numerals in the
margins. This is the price that must be paid for increased efficiency.
The wise reader will divide his attention between the new business-like
edition and one of the charming old ones, in four comfortable volumes,
where the text is supreme upon the page, and the paragraphs follow one
another at leisurely intervals. The type may be a little faded, and the
paper a little yellow; but what of that? It is all quiet and easy; and,
as one reads, the brilliant sentences seem to come to one, out of the
Past, with the friendliness of a conversation.

1906.

NOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Lives of the English Poets_. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press,
1905.]

MADAME DU DEFFAND[2]

When Napoleon was starting for his campaign in Russia