n. Theologians think it a
pretty air-castle to talk of the Spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud,
of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again to the solid
ground of historical evidence; and even the poets are contented with a
civil and conformed manner of living, and to write poems from the fancy,
at a safe distance from their own experience. But the highest minds of
the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or shall
I say the quadruple or the centuple or much more manifold meaning, of
every sensuous fact; Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch,
Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry.
For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and
torch-bearers, but children of the fire, made of it, and only the same
divinity transmuted and at two or three removes, when we know least
about it. And this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this
river of Time and its creatures floweth are intrinsically ideal and
beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and functions of
the Poet, or the man of Beauty; to the means and materials he uses, and
to the general aspect of the art in the present time.

The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is representative. He
stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not
of his wealth, but of the common wealth. The young man reveres men of
genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They
receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more. Nature enhances
her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet
is beholding her shows at the same time. He is isolated among his
contemporaries by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his
pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live
by truth and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice,
in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret.
The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate expression is
rare. I know not how it is that we need an interpreter, but the great
majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession
of their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have
had with nature. There is no man who does not anticipate a supersensual
utility in the sun and stars, earth and water. These stand and wai