t upon that great and inexhaustible word
_life_, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt
against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against _life_; a poetry of
indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards
_life_.

Epictetus had a happy figure for things like the play of the senses, or
literary form and finish, or argumentative ingenuity, in comparison with
"the best and master thing" for us, as he called it, the concern, how to
live. Some people were afraid of them, he said, or they disliked and
undervalued them. Such people were wrong; they were unthankful or
cowardly. But the things might also be over-prized, and treated as final
when they are not. They bear to life the relation which inns bear to
home. "As if a man, journeying home, and finding a nice inn on the road,
and liking it, were to stay forever at the inn! Man, thou hast
forgotten thine object; thy journey was not _to_ this, but _through_
this. 'But this inn is taking.' And how many other inns, too, are
taking, and how many fields and meadows! but as places of passage
merely, you have an object, which is this: to get home, to do your duty
to your family, friends, and fellow-countrymen, to attain inward
freedom, serenity, happiness, contentment. Style takes your fancy,
arguing takes your fancy, and you forget your home and want to make your
abode with them and to stay with them, on the plea that they are taking.
Who denies that they are taking? but as places of passage, as inns. And
when I say this, you suppose me to be attacking the care for style, the
care for argument. I am not; I attack the resting in them, the not
looking to the end which is beyond them."[372]

Now, when we come across a poet like Theophile Gautier,[373] we have a
poet who has taken up his abode at an inn, and never got farther. There
may be inducements to this or that one of us, at this or that moment, to
find delight in him, to cleave to him; but after all, we do not change
the truth about him,--we only stay ourselves in his inn along with him.
And when we come across a poet like Wordsworth, who sings

"Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope,
And melancholy fear subdued by faith,
Of blessed consolations in distress,
Of moral strength and intellectual power,
Of joy in widest commonalty spread--"[374]

then we have a poet intent on "the best and master thing," and who
prosecutes his journey home. We say, for brevity's sake,