The Functions of

Sense.

The mind of

an under-world of dead impressions that Poetry
works her will, raising that in power which was
sown in weakness, quickening a spiritual body
from the ashes of the natural body.
man is peopled, like some silent city, with a
sleeping company of reminiscences, associations,
impressions, attitudes, emotions, to be awakened
into fierce activity at the touch of words. By
one way or other, with a fanfaronnade of the
marching trumpets, or stealthily, by noiseless
passages and dark posterns, the troop of sug-
gesters enters the citadel, to do its work within.
The procession of beautiful sounds that is a poem
passes in through the main gate, and forthwith
the by-ways resound to the hurry of ghostly feet,
until the small company of adventurers is well-
nigh lost and overwhelmed in that throng of
insurgent spirits.

To attempt to reduce the art of literature to its component sense-elements is therefore vain. Memory, "the warder of the brain," is a fickle trustee, whimsically lavish to strangers, giving up to the appeal of a spoken word or unspoken

symbol, an odour or a touch, all that has been garnered by the sensitive capacities of man. It is the part of the writer to play upon memory, confusing what belongs to one sense with what belongs to another, extorting images of colour at a word, raising ideas of harmony without breaking the stillness of the air. He can lead on the dance of words till their sinuous movements call forth, as if by mesmerism, the likeness of some adamantine rigidity, time is converted into space, and music begets sculpture. To see for the sake of seeing, to hear for the sake of hearing, are subsidiary exercises of his complex metaphysical art, to be counted among its rudiments. Picture and music can furnish but the faint beginnings of a philosophy of letters. Necessary though they be to a writer, they are transmuted in his service to new forms, and made to further purposes not their own.

The power of vision-hardly can a writer, least of all if he be a poet, forego that part of his equipment. In dealing with the impalpable, dim subjects that lie beyond the border-land of exact

Picture.

knowledge, the poetic instinct seeks always to bring them into clear definition and bright concrete imagery, so that it might seem for the moment as if painting also could deal with them. Every abstract conception, as it passes into the light of the creative imagination, acquires structure and firmness and colour, as flowers do in the light of the sun. Life and Death, Love and Youth, Hope and Time, become persons in poetry, not that they may wear the tawdry habiliments of the studio, but because persons are the objects of the most familiar sympathy and the most intimate knowledge.

How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart

Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand Full grown the helpful daughter of my heart,

What time with thee indeed I reach the strand Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art, And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?

And as a keen eye for the imagery attendant on a word is essential to all writing, whether prose or poetry, that attempts the heart, so languor of the visual faculty can work disaster even in the calm periods of philosophic expatiation. "It

cannot be doubted," says one whose daily meditations enrich The People's Post-Bag, “that Fear is, to a great extent, the mother of Cruelty." Alas, by the introduction of that brief proviso, conceived in a spirit of admirably cautious selfdefence, the writer has unwittingly given himself to the horns of a dilemma whose ferocity nothing can mitigate. These tempered and conditional truths are not in nature, which decrees, with uncompromising dogmatism, that either a woman is one's mother, or she is not. The writer probably meant merely that "fear is one of the causes of cruelty," and had he used a colourless abstract word the platitude might pass unchallenged. But a vague desire for the emphasis and glamour of literature having brought in the word "mother," has yet failed to set the sluggish imagination to work, and a word so glowing with picture and vivid with sentiment is damped and dulled by the thumb-mark of besotted usage to mean no more than "cause" or "occasion." Only for the poet, perhaps, are words live winged things, flashing with colour and laden with scent; yet one poor

Melody.

spark of imagination might save them from this sad descent to sterility and darkness.

Of no less import is the power of melody, which chooses, rejects, and orders words for the satisfaction that a cunningly varied return of sound can give to the ear. Some critics have amused themselves with the hope that here, in the laws and practices regulating the audible cadence of words, may be found the first principles of style, the form which fashions the matter, the apprenticeship to beauty which alone can make an art of truth. And it may be admitted that verse, owning, as it does, a professed and canonical allegiance to music, sometimes carries its devotion so far that thought swoons into melody, and the thing said seems a discovery made by the way in the search for tuneful expression.

What thing unto mine ear

Wouldst thou convey,—what secret thing,
O wandering water ever whispering?
Surely thy speech shall be of her,

Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,

What message dost thou bring?

In this stanza an exquisitely modulated tune