of poets on this subject, however, show
them to be, not rationalists, but thoroughgoing Platonists. The feeling
in which they trust is a Platonic intuition which includes the reason,
but exists above it. At least this is the view of Shelley, and Shelley
has, more largely than any other man, moulded the beliefs of later
English poets. It is because he judges imaginative feeling to be always
in harmony with the deepest truths perceived by the reason that he
advertises his intention to purify men by awakening their feelings.
Therefore, in his preface to _The Revolt of Islam_ he says "I would
only awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of
true virtue." in the preface to the _Cenci,_ again, he declares,
"Imagination is as the immortal God which should take flesh for the
redemption of human passion."

The poet, while thus expressing absolute faith in the power of beauty to
redeem the world, yet is obliged to take into account the Platonic
distinction between the beautiful and the lover of the beautiful.
[Footnote: _Symposium,_ Sec. 204.]

No man is pure poet, he admits, but in proportion as he approaches
perfect artistry, his life is purified. Shelley is expressing the
beliefs of practically all artists when he says, "The greatest poets
have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate
prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the
most fortunate of men; and the exceptions, as they regard those who
possess the poetical faculty in a high, yet an inferior degree, will be
found upon consideration to confirm, rather than to destroy, the rule."
[Footnote: _The Defense of Poetry._]

Sidney Lanier's verse expresses this argument of Shelley precisely. In
_The Crystal,_ Lanier indicates that the ideal poet has never been
embodied. Pointing out the faults of his favorite poets, he contrasts
their muddy characters with the perfect purity of Christ. And in _Life
and Song_ he repeats the same idea:

None of the singers ever yet
Has wholly lived his minstrelsy,
Or truly sung his true, true thought.

Philosophers may retort that this imperfection in the singer's life
arises not merely from the inevitable difference between the lover and
the beauty which he loves, but from the fact that the object of the
poet's love is not really that highest beauty which is identical with
the good. Poets are content with the "many beautiful," Plato charges,
instead of pressing on to