MILTON.

It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was
exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on
the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I
stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an
apparition. I listened, I looked around me, I could hear
nothing, nor see anything. I went up to a rising ground to
look farther. I went up the shore, and down the shore, but it
was all one, I could see no other impressions but that one. I
went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe
if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that,
for there was exactly the very print of a foot, toes, heel,
and every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor
could in the least imagine.--DEFOE.

NOTE

It would be well to apply the critical principles of this chapter, and
indeed of the entire Part Second, to some brief but complete work. For
this purpose the teacher might assign Macaulay's "Essay on Milton," De
Quincey's "Joan of Arc," Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," Webster's "First
Bunker Hill Oration," or some other similar work. After determining the
diction, prevailing type of sentences, and figures of speech, let the
student divide the work, as far as possible, into its descriptive,
narrative, expository, argumentative, and persuasive portions. In many
cases the various kinds of discourse will be so interwoven that the
classification will be doubtful and difficult. At the same time the
student might point out the passages in which thought, imagination,
feeling, or energy of will predominates in a marked degree. The effort
should be made accurately to characterize the author's style as a whole.

PART THIRD

KINDS OF LITERATURE

CHAPTER VII

NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF POETRY

+44. Definition.+ We may approximately define poetry as the metrical
expression of lofty or beautiful thought, feeling, or action, in
imaginative and artistic form. Its metrical character distinguishes it
from prose; for there is no such thing as prose poetry, though we
sometimes find, as in the best passages of Ruskin, poetical prose. Its
aesthetic idea or content, its exquisite diction, and its artistic form
distinguish genuine poetry from mere verse, which is the mechanical or
unartistic expression of commonplace thought, feeling, or incident.
Poetry is, in large measure, a produ