y, "Every poet is convinced that it
does." [Footnote: _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, "A Memorable
Fancy."] To the cold critic, such an answer as Emerson's and Blake's is
doubtless unsatisfactory, but to the poet, as to the religious
enthusiast, his own ecstasy is an all-sufficient evidence.

The thoroughgoing romanticist will accept no other test. The critic of
the Johnsonian tradition may urge him to gauge the worth of his impulse
by its seemliness and restraint, but the romantic poet's utter surrender
to a power from on high makes unrestraint seem a virtue to him. So with
the critic's suggestion that the words coming to the poet in his season
of madness be made to square with his returning reason. Emerson quotes,
and partially accepts the dictum, "Poetry must first be good sense,
though it is something more." [Footnote: See the essay on
_Imagination_.] But the poet is more apt to account for his belief
in his visions by Tertullian's motto, _Credo quod absurdum_.

If overwhelming passion is an absolute test of true inspiration, whence
arises the uncertainty and confusion in the poet's own mind, concerning
matters poetical? Why is a writer so stupid as to include one hundred
pages of trash in the same volume with his one inspired poem? The answer
seems to be that no writer is guided solely by inspiration. Not that he
ever consciously falsifies or modifies the revelation given him in his
moment of inspiration, but the revelation is ever hauntingly incomplete.

The slightest adverse influence may jar upon the harmony between the
poet's soul and the spirit of poetry. The stories of Dante's "certain
men of business," who interrupted his drawing of Beatrice, and of
Coleridge's visitors who broke in upon the writing of _Kubla Khan_,
are notorious. Tennyson, in _The Poet's Mind_, warns all intruders
away from the singer's inspired hour. He tells them,

In your eye there is death;
There is frost in your breath
Which would blight the plants.
* * * * *
In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants;
It would fall to the ground if you came in.

But it is not fair always to lay the shattering of the poet's dream to
an intruder. The poet himself cannot account for its departure, so
delicate and evanescent is it. Emerson says,

There are open hours
When the God's will sallies free,
And the dull idiot might see
The flowing fortunes of a thousand years;--
Sudden, at una