and feelings, but they strive to conform to the principles of
immortal art. Every great poet is as much an artist as the
sculptor or the painter: and art survives learning itself. Varro,
the most learned of the Romans, is forgotten, when Virgil is
familiar to every school-boy. Cicero himself would not have been
immortal, if his essays and orations had not conformed to the
principles of art. Even an historian who would live must be an
artist, like Voltaire or Macaulay. A cumbrous, or heavy, or
pedantic historian will never be read, even if his learning be
praised by all the critics of Germany.

Poets are the great artists of language. They even create
languages, like Homer and Shakspeare. They are the ornaments of
literature. But they are more than ornaments. They are the sages
whose sayings are treasured up and valued and quoted from age to
age, because of the inspiration which is given to them,--an insight
into the mysteries of the soul and the secrets of life. A good
song is never lost; a good poem is never buried, like a system of
philosophy, but has an inherent vitality, like the melodies of the
son of Jesse. Real poetry is something, too, beyond elaborate
versification, which is one of the literary fashions, and passes
away like other fashions unless, redeemed by something that arouses
the soul, and elevates it, and appeals to the consciousness of
universal humanity. It is the poets who make revelations, like
prophets and sages of old; it is they who invest history with
interest; like Shakspeare and Racine, and preserve what is most
vital and valuable in it. They even adorn philosophy, like
Lucretius, when he speculated on the systems of the Ionian
philosophers. They certainly impress powerfully on the mind the
truths of theology, as Watts and Cowper and Wesley did in their