arts in himself, yet dimly craved for more than earth could
give. From these times the poems pass on to the early and late
Renaissance, and from that to the struggle for freedom in Italy, and
from that to modern life in Europe. This great range illustrates the
penetration and the versatility of his genius. He could place us with
ease and truth at Corinth, Athens or Rome, in Paris, Vienna or London;
and wherever we go with him we are at home.

One word more must be said about the way a great number of these poems
arose. They leaped up in his imagination full-clad and finished at a
single touch from the outside. _Caliban upon Setebos_ took its rise from
a text in the Bible which darted into his mind as he read the _Tempest_.
_Cleon_ arose as he read that verse in St. Paul's speech at Athens, "As
certain also of your own poets have said." I fancy that _An Epistle of
Karshish_ was born one day when he read those two stanzas in _In
Memoriam_ about Lazarus, and imagined how the subject would come to him.
_Fra Lippo Lippi_ slipped into his mind one day at the Belle Arti at
Florence as he stood before the picture described in the poem, and
walked afterwards at night through the streets of Florence. These fine
things are born in a moment, and come into our world from poet, painter,
and musician, full-grown; built, like Aladdin's palace, with all their
jewels, in a single night. They are inexplicable by any scientific
explanation, as inexplicable as genius itself. When have the
hereditarians explained Shakespeare, Mozart, Turner? When has the
science of the world explained the birth of a lyric of Burns, a song of
Beethoven's, or a drawing of Raffaelle? Let these gentlemen veil their
eyes, and confess their inability to explain the facts. For it is fact
they touch. "Full fathom five thy father lies"--that song of Shakespeare
exists. The overture to Don Giovanni is a reality. We can see the
Bacchus and Ariadne at the National Gallery and the Theseus at the
Museum. These are facts; but they are a million million miles beyond the
grasp of any science. Nay, the very smallest things of their kind, the
slightest water-colour sketch of Turner, a half-finished clay sketch of
Donatello, the little song done in the corner of a provincial paper by a
working clerk in a true poetic hour, are not to be fathomed by the most
far-descending plummet of the scientific understanding. These things are
in that superphysical world into which, however cl