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gathered by
the eye from the printed page. The alternative will be called delusive,
for, in European literature at least, there is no word-symbol that does
not imply a spoken sound, and no excellence without euphony. But the
other way is possible, the gulf between mind and mind may be bridged
by something which has a right to the name of literature although it
exacts no aid from the ear. The picture-writing of the Indians, the
hieroglyphs of Egypt, may be cited as examples of literary meaning
conveyed with no implicit help from the spoken word. Such an art,
were it capable of high development, would forsake the kinship of
melody, and depend for its sensual elements of delight on the laws of
decorative pattern. In a land of deaf-mutes it might come to a measure
of perfection. But where human intercourse is chiefly by speech, its
connexion with the interests and passions of daily life would perforce
be of the feeblest, it would tend more and more to cast off the fetters of
meaning that it might do freer service to the jealous god of visible

beauty. The overpowering rivalry of speech would rob it of all its
symbolic intent and leave its bare picture. Literature has favoured
rather the way of the ear and has given itself zealously to the tuneful
ordering of sounds. Let it be repeated, therefore, that for the traffic of
letters the senses are but the door-keepers of the mind; none of them
commands an only way of access,--the deaf can read by sight, the blind
by touch. It is not amid the bustle of the live senses, but in an
under-world of dead impressions that Poetry works her will, raising
that in power which was sown in weakness, quickening a spiritual body
from the ashes of the natural body. The mind of man is peopled, like
some silent city, with a sleeping company of reminiscences,
associations, impressions, attitudes, emotions, to be awakened into
fierce activity at the touch of words. By one way or another, with a
fanfaronnade of the marching trumpets, or stealthily, by noiseless
passages and dark posterns, the troop of suggesters enters the citadel, to
do its work within. The procession of beautiful sounds that is a poem
passes in through the main gate, and forthwith the by-ways resound to
the hurry of ghostly feet, until the small company of adventurers is
well-nigh lost and overwhelmed in that throng of insurgent spirits.
To attempt to reduce the art of literature to its component sense-
elements is therefore vain. Memory, "the warder of the brain," is a
fickle trustee, whimsically lavish to strangers, giving up to the appeal
of a spoken word or unspoken symbol, an odour or a touch, all that has
been garnered by the sensitive capacities of man. It is the part of the
writer to play upon memory, confusing what belongs to one sense with
what belongs to another, extorting images of colour at a word, raising
ideas of harmony without breaking the stillness of the air. He can lead
on the dance of words till their sinuous movements call forth, as if by
mesmerism, the likeness of some adamantine rigidity, time is converted
into space, and music begets sculpture. To see for the sake of seeing, to
hear for the sake of hearing, are subsidiary exercises of his complex
metaphysical art, to be counted among its rudiments. Picture and music
can furnish but the faint beginnings of a philosophy of letters.
Necessary though they be to a writer, they are transmuted in his service
to new forms, and made to further purposes not their own.

The power of vision--hardly can a writer, least of all if he be a poet,
forego that part of his equipment. In dealing with the impalpable, dim
subjects that lie beyond the border-land of exact knowledge, the poetic
instinct seeks always to bring them into clear definition and bright
concrete imagery, so that it might seem for the moment as if painting
also could deal with them. Every abstract conception, as it passes into
the light of the creative imagination, acquires structure and firmness
and colour, as flowers do in the light of the sun. Life and Death, Love
and Youth, Hope and Time, become persons in poetry, not that they
may wear the tawdry habiliments of the studio, but because persons are
the objects of the most familiar sympathy and the most intimate
knowledge.
How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart Still a young child's with
mine, or wilt thou stand Full grown the helpful daughter of my heart,
What time with thee indeed I reach the strand Of the pale wave which
knows thee what thou art, And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?
And as a