aspect; but in Shakspeare's it might have been different; and the
highest order of genius, like true catholicity of faith, counts "nothing
common or unclean." What poetry Burns has gathered up even in "Poosie
Nancy's," which had been lying unsuspected at the feet of beggars,
prostitutes, and pickpockets! What powerful imagination there is in
Crabbe's descriptions of poorhouses, prisons, and asylums; and in
Wordsworth's "Old Cumberland Beggar," who, although he lived and died in
the "eye of nature," was clothed in rags, and had the vulgar, mendicant
meal-bag slung over his shoulders! What pathos Scott extracts from that
"black bitch of a boat," which Mucklebackit, in the frenzy of his grief,
accuses for the loss of his son! Which of the lower animals less
poetical or coarser than a swine? and yet Shakspeare introduces such a
creature with great effect in "Macbeth," in that weird dialogue of the
witches--

"Where hast thou been, sister?"
"Killing swine."

And Goethe makes it ideal by mingling it with the mad revelry of the
"Walpurgis Night"--

"An able sow, with old Baubo upon her.
Is worthy of glory and worthy of honour."

The whole truth on this vexed question may perhaps be summed up in the
following propositions:--1st, No object, natural or artificial, is _per
se_ out of the province of imagination; 2d, There is no _infinite_ gulf
between natural and artificial objects, or between the higher and lower
degrees of either, as subjects for the idealising power of poetry; 3d,
Ere any object natural or artificial, become poetical, it must be