signifying all. It is not a little notable, as showing the same feeling
elsewhere at work, that 'essil' (= exilium) in old French signified,
not only banishment, but ruin, destruction, misery. In the same manner
[Greek: nostimos] meaning at first no more than having to do with a
return, comes in the end to signify almost anything which is favourable
and auspicious.

Let us then acknowledge man a born poet; if not every man himself a
'maker' yet every one able to rejoice in what others have made,
adopting it freely, moving gladly in it as his own most congenial
element and sphere. For indeed, as man does not live by bread alone, as
little is he content to find in language merely the instrument which
shall enable him to buy and sell and get gain, or otherwise make
provision for the lower necessities of his animal life. He demands to
find in it as well what shall stand in a real relation and
correspondence to the higher faculties of his being, shall feed,
nourish, and sustain these, shall stir him with images of beauty and
suggestions of greatness. Neither here nor anywhere else could he
become the mere utilitarian, even if he would. Despite his utmost
efforts, were he so far at enmity with his own good as to put them
forth, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the poetical
element with which it is penetrated through and through; he could not
succeed in stripping it of blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it
nothing but a bare and naked stem. He may fancy for a moment that he
has succeeded in doing this; but it will only need for him to become a
little better philologer, to go a little deeper into the story of the
words which he is using, and he will discover that he is as remote as
ever from such an unhappy consummation, from so disastrous a success.

For ourselves, let us desire and attempt nothing of the kind. Our life