of logic which requires to be transferred from prose to
poetry, just as the music and perfection of language are infused by
poetry into prose. In all ages the poet has been a bad judge of his
own meaning (Apol.); for he does not see that the word which is full
of associations to his own mind is difficult and unmeaning to that of
another; or that the sequence which is clear to himself is puzzling to
others. There are many passages in some of our greatest modern poets
which are far too obscure; in which there is no proportion between style
and subject, in which any half-expressed figure, any harsh construction,
any distorted collocation of words, any remote sequence of ideas is
admitted; and there is no voice 'coming sweetly from nature,' or music
adding the expression of feeling to thought. As if there could be poetry
without beauty, or beauty without ease and clearness. The obscurities
of early Greek poets arose necessarily out of the state of language and
logic which existed in their age. They are not examples to be followed
by us; for the use of language ought in every generation to become
clearer and clearer. Like Shakespere, they were great in spite, not
in consequence, of their imperfections of expression. But there is no
reason for returning to the necessary obscurity which prevailed in
the infancy of literature. The English poets of the last century were
certainly not obscure; and we have no excuse for losing what they had
gained, or for going back to the earlier or transitional age which
preceded them. The thought of our own times has not out-stripped
language; a want of Plato's 'art of measuring' is the rule cause of the
disproportion between them.

3. In the third book of the Republic a nearer approach is made to a
theory of art than anywhere else in Plato. His views may be summed up
as follows:--True art is not fanciful and imitative, but simple and
ideal,--the expression of the highest moral energy, whether in action or
repose. To live among works of plastic art which are of this noble
and simple character, or to listen to such strains, is the best of
influences,--the true Greek atmosphere, in which youth should be brought
up. That is the way to create in them a natural good taste, which will
have a feeling of truth and beauty in all things. For though the
poets are to be expelled, still art is recognized as another aspect of
reason--like love in the Symposium, extending over the same sphere, but
confined t