In these two passages from "Coriolanus" and "King John" what
magnificence of hyperbole! The imagination of the reader, swept on
from image to image, is strained to follow that of the poet.
And yet, to the capable, how the pile of amplification lifts out the
naked truth. Read these passages to a score of well-clad auditors,
taken by chance from the thoroughfare of a wealthy city, or from the
benches of a popular lecture-room. To the expanded mold wherein the
passages are wrought, a few--five or six, perhaps, of the
twenty--would be able to fit their minds, zestfully climbing the
poet's climax. To some they would be dazzling, semi-offensive
extravagance, prosaic minds not liking, because seeing but dimly by,
the poetically imaginative light. And to some they would be grossly
unintelligible, the enjoyment of the few full appreciators seeming to
them unnatural or affected.

Now, the enjoyment of the few appreciators, what is its source? By
these passages certain feelings in them are made to vibrate and are
pitched to a high key. A very comprehensive word is feelings. What is
the nature of those feelings thus wrought upon?

The elementary feelings of our nature, when in healthful function, are
capable of emitting spiritual light; and, when exalted to their purest
action, do and must emit such, the inward fire sending forth clear
flame unmixed with smoke. To perceive this light, and, still
more, to have your path illuminated thereby, implies the present
activity of some of the higher human sensibilities; and to be so
organized as to be able to embody in words, after having imagined,
personages, conditions, and conjunctions whence this light shall flash
on and ignite the sensibilities of others, implies, besides vivid
sympathies and delight in the beautiful, a susceptibility to the