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whole sustenance from knowledge of facts. Now, in such an age as that of the revival, when all were turning in the deliciousness of a new liberty towards nature, we find that Bacon's greatest claim to fame consists in a similar impulse. He may justly be called, as Hallam calls him, the father of modern science; not because he made discoveries in science (his attempts in that direction having proved ineffectual on account of his not being able to use the machine, the Organon, that he had constructed), but because he first propounded the method on which all true scientific research is conducted, or rather first so defined and organized it that it was henceforth of practical use. Abandoning the unscientific dogmatic system of the past, which had beheld astronomy changed into astrology, and science into the black art, he insisted on a special process of induction-a methodized appeal to nature for facts, from which to infer a law. I shall, perhaps, speak of this method more fully on some other occasion.* Here I merely remark that his great discovery, by which he pointed. out (as has been well said) the promised land, as Moses from Pisgah,-a promised land that he, as Moses, never entered,-was a natural product of the

*The Baconian methods were something beyond mere imperfect induction from experience. For a full discussion of their nature and value, and their difference from Aristotelian and other methods, see Hallam's Lit. Hist. iii. 3. It must be, however, remarked that Bacon's claims as a discoverer of a new method are at the present day largely disallowed.

age in which all men were turning towards and revelling in nature. Certainty-to be gained by an appeal to natural facts-that was Bacon's watchword and as far as scientific certainty is concerned he was right. Bacon, if any man, has deserved to inherit the title given by Dante with his unerring accuracy to Aristotle-" the master of those who know"-sovereign in the realm of empirical know

ledge.

This inductive method Bacon deemed necessary for obtaining results in other than scientific subjects. Perhaps as regards the investigations into the laws. of the human mind he was still justified in using it, for such inquiry is a science and its conclusions are scientific truths. But there is a domain higher than that of fact-truth, and Bacon, finding the uselessness of his method here, though he professes a deep reverence for matters of faith, denies that we can attain a certainty in what is beyond the test of experience. He is, indeed, though he endeavours to conceal the fact, a positivist; and of all false philosophies positivism, which is one of the most specious, is the one most fatally destructive of our belief in those truths of which nature and art are heaven-sent messengers.

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CHAPTER V.

THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL AND THE NEW REVIVAL.

We have now * considered some of the chief features of the poets who wrote during the period that followed the golden age of Shakespeare and Spenser, in which age we must also include, though in time later, Milton. We have seen how their characteristics are, on the one hand, extravagance and hyperbole, due to an abuse of natural liberty, and on the other hand subtlety of thought and language, conceits, remote analogies, curious acrostic puzzles and metaphysical riddles the result of a study of the human mind and passions from an unpoetic point of view. The faculty that treats a subject in this manner, that merely treats (although in rhythmical language) of the appearances of the world of mind and passion, is a faculty far removed from, and to some extent the very converse of the poetic. No creation is attempted, and

* The lecture here alluded to has been omitted from the present series.

consequently the necessity of a form in which to create is not perceived. Naturally, therefore, form, being neglected, disappears.

Art requires form.

To make ourselves clear on this point, before I speak of the reaction against these formless versemakers, and the adoption of a form by the new school, let us consider what we mean by the word "form."

I do not wish to launch myself upon, or ask you to follow my vain wanderings over, a shoreless ocean in the quest for that Earthly Paradise where the mystery of spirit and matter, of perfection in imperfection, is revealed to the human mind. But I think we may safely assume that for form of any kind-whether in art or elsewhere-to be of any value, it must be a manifestation of spirit, however that manifestation may be produced.

Form is a necessary co-efficient of all material, and also of all intellectual, existence. So necessary is it, that Dante, paradoxically perhaps, but profoundly calls the soul the body's form.* Without accepting this expression literally, we may at least allow that matter without the influence of spirit is formless and meaningless, and that all true form is dependent on-is the manifestation of-spirit. And we have

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* This thought seems to have been borrowed from Thomas Aquinas. It is repeated by Spenser in his Hymn in Honour of Beauty." Form was called "natura naturans (the condition of existence) by the schoolmen.

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seen that the real existence of everything in art and in nature is dependent on the idea that it represents. Therefore true form in a work of art is the direct and vital development of the idea and when it is not this, but adventitious, it is merely an imitation, "twice removed" (to use Plato's words) "from the thing as it was originally created."

And yet this mere accomplishment of imitating a form in its external appearance has conferred on not a few the name of poet.

Let us for a few moments consider this question.

A poet must have vision, poetic faculty, and accomplishment, i.e. the mastery over material. To use my former definition, poetry is the production of a form which represents an idea.

And here I would remark that the word "poet" originally meant a "maker," so that one may with all appropriateness say that woínois, or the production of form, is essential in poetry. As an illustration of the real meaning of the word, viz. production of a form, one might cite the fact that πoía is the word found inscribed on ancient sculptures to denote the act, not of making verses, but the formation of such a defined and palpable entirety as a statue. When used therefore in its present ordinary sense, the word "poet may without inaccuracy be said to involve the essential of formative power-and poetry to necessarily forequire rm.

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It does not, however, follow that poetic form

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