sobriety. Yet always they excel your philosophers, insomuch
as they accept the transcendental as really transcendental and do not
profess to instruct the Almighty in it; and chiefly, perhaps, they excel
your philosophers by opposing a creativeness, potential at any rate,
against a certain and foredoomed barrenness. For the philosophers would
get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows
that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even
passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse
of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real
understanding of the Creator."

Yet the philosopher will go on to the end of time despising the poet,
who grasps at mysteries _per saltum_, neglecting the military road of
logic.

Shall we then, by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy
and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious:
Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been
found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of
counterpoint, is capable of harmonies deeper and more intricate than any
within the range of human speech. In short, against Poetry, Music can
set up a very strong claim.

But first we note that--_securus judicat orbis terrarum_--in the
beginning Poetry and Music did their business together (with the Dance
conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to
trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while
Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have
grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names--_ballata,
sonata_--imply that they started in dependence upon dance and
orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or
competitor, is a historical fact, if a startling one, which Mr.
Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a
little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of
superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art.
This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for
harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment
upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that
excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest
music of AEschylus, of Pindar, of Shakespear