"That is a hard question to answer straight off," he replied.--He had
once liked Tennyson, else he would not have answered so.--"Had you asked
me if I liked _In Memoriam_" he went on, "I could more easily have
answered you."

"Then, don't you like _In Memoriam_?"

"No; it is weak and exaggerated."

"Ah! you don't understand it. I didn't until after my father died. Then
I began to know what it meant, and now think it the most beautiful poem
I ever read."

"You are fond of poetry, then?"

"I don't read much; but I think there is more in some poetry than in all
the prose in the world."

"That is a good deal to say."

"A good deal too much, when I think that I haven't read, I suppose,
twenty books in my life--that is, books worth calling books: I don't
mean novels and things of that kind. Yet I can not believe twenty years
of good reading would make me change my mind about _In Memoriam_.--You
don't like poetry?"

"I can't say I do--much. I like Pope and Crabbe--and--let me see--well,
I used to like Thomson. I like the men that give you things just as they
are. I do not like the poets that mix themselves up with what they see,
and then rave about Nature. I confess myself a lover of the truth beyond
all things."

"But are you sure," she returned, looking him gently but straight in
the eyes, "that, in your anxiety not to make more of things than they
are, you do not make less of them than they are?"

"There is no fear of that," returned Faber sadly, with an unconscious
shake of the head. "So long as there is youth and imagination on that
side to paint them,--"

"Excuse me: are you not begging the question? Do they paint, or do they
see what they say? Some profess to believe that the child sees more
truly than the grown man--that the latter is the one who paints,--paints
out, that is, with a coarse brush."

"You mean Wordsworth."

"Not him only."

"True; no end of poets besides. They all say it now-a-days."

"But surely, Mr. Faber, if there be a God,--"

"Ah!" interrupted the doctor, "there, _you_ beg the question. Suppose
there should be no God, what then?"

"Then, I grant you, there could be no poetry. Somebody says poetry is
the speech of hope; and certainly if there were no God, there could be
no hope."

Faber was struck with what she said, not from any feeling that there was
truth in it, but from its indication of a not illogical mind. He was on
the point of replying that certain kinds of poetry,