and had only to be stripped of its superfluous wrappings, or like
the indolent fallacy of those economic soothsayers to whom Malthus
brought rough awakening, that population and the means of
subsistence move side by side in harmonious progress. But hunger
does not imply food, and there may hover in the restless heads of
poets, as themselves testify -


One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,
Which into words no virtue can digest.


Matter and form are not so separable as the popular philosophy
would have them; indeed, the very antithesis between them is a
cardinal instance of how language reacts on thought, modifying and
fixing a cloudy truth. The idea pursues form not only that it may
be known to others, but that it may know itself, and the body in
which it becomes incarnate is not to be distinguished from the
informing soul. It is recorded of a famous Latin historian how he
declared that he would have made Pompey win the battle of Pharsalia
had the effective turn of the sentence required it. He may stand
for the true type of the literary artist. The business of letters,
howsoever simple it may seem to those who think truth-telling a
gift of nature, is in reality two-fold, to find words for a
meaning, and to find a meaning for words. Now it is the words that
refuse to yield, and now the meaning, so that he who attempts to
wed them is at the same time altering his words to suit his
meaning, and modifying and shaping his meaning to satisfy the
requirements of his words. The humblest processes of thought have
had their first education from language long before they took shape