by telling it, not as anything new or strange, _but so as we recognise
it_.

* * * * *

And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every
bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted
indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised--the
emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of
emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an
emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the
desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is
(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been
discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a
_στοργή_ rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its fatherhood.
Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest expectation of
the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And not only
they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet has tears
that reach the heart of the transitory show: _Sunt lacrim� rerum, et
mentem mortalia tangunt_--"Tears are for Life, mortal things pierce the
soul."

And why not? For the complete man--_totus homo_--has feelings as well as
reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the
best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the
record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."
He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being
"fortunate," _felices_, in such moments, but that they were happy in the
sense of being "blessed," _beati_; and this feeling of blessedness they