the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of
imitation" (_πα̂σαι τυγχάνουσιν οὖσαι μιμήσεις τὸ σύνολον_). "What?" we
say--"Nothing better than _that_?"--for "imitation" has a bad name among
men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind that there
are imitations and imitations (the _Imitatio Christi_ among them), let
us go on to see what it is that in Aristotle's opinion Poetry imitates
or copies. It is "the Universal" (_τό καθόλου_): and as soon as we
realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track as Aristotle,
after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or a slavish
imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena as they
pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better than
they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech,
intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law"
the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded
reader of the _Poetics_, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that
this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it
probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference
that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and
the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the
heavens."

* * * * *

Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have
indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner
harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness"
until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune
together. The Psalmist describes the process accurately: "While I was
thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue."
"Poetry," writes Shelley, "is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted