transfigured, that of the twelve apostles he took with him the three; wherein morally we may understand, that in matters of the greatest secrecy we ought to have few companions. The fourth sense is called anagogic, that is, above sense; and this is when a writing is expounded spiritually which, even in its literal sense, by the matters signified, sets forth the high things of glory everlasting: as may be seen in that Song of the Prophet which says that in the coming out of the people of Israel from Egypt, Judah was made holy and free. Which, although it is plainly true according to the letter, is not less true as understood spiritually: that is, the Soul, in coming out from sin, is made holy and free." The rest of the chapter (Conv. ii. 1) dwells on the point, which Dante evidently considers of great importance, that the literal sense must always be understood before we go on to seek out the other senses. The reversal of this order is, indeed, impossible, for the other senses are contained in the literal sense, which is their envelope; and besides, the literal sense is "better known to us," as the Philosopher says in the First Book of the Physics; and not to begin with it would be irrational-contrary to the natural order. To 3. PLATO'S MYTHS DISTINGUISHED FROM ALLEGORIES. WHAT EXPERIENCE, OR "PART OF THE SOUL," DOES THE PLATONIC MYTH APPEAL? Plato, we know from the Republic1 and Phaedrus, deprecated the allegorical interpretation of Myths, and his own Myths, we assume, are not to be taken as allegories; but rather as representing, in the action of the Platonic Drama, natural products of that dream-world consciousness which encompasses the field of ordinary wide-awake consciousness in educated minds as well as in the minds of children and primitive men. In appealing to the dream-world consciousness of his readers by a brilliant literary representation of its natural products those stories which primitive men cannot leave un told, and philosophers love to hear well told-Plato appeals to an experience which is more solid than one might infer from the mere content of the uvoλoyía in which it finds expression. He appeals to that major part of man's nature which is not articulate and logical, but feels, and wills, and acts—to that part which cannot explain what a thing is, or how it happens, but feels that the thing is good or bad, and expresses itself, not scientifically in "existential" or "theoretic judgments," but practically in "value-judgments"-or rather" value-feelings." Man was, with the brute, practical, and had struck the roots of his being deep into the world of reality, ages before he began to be scientific, and to think about the "values" which he felt. And long before he began to think about the "values" which he felt, feeling had taken into its service his imagination with its whole apparatus of phantasms-waking dreams and sleep-dreams—and made them its exponents. In appealing, through the recital of dreams, to that major part of us which feels "values," which wills and acts, Plato indeed goes down to the bedrock of human nature. At that depth man is more at one with Universal Nature- more in her secret, as it were -than he is at the level of his "higher" faculties, where he lives in a conceptual world of his own making which he is always endeavouring to " think." And after all, however high he may rise as "thinker," it is only of "values" that he genuinely thinks; and the ground of all "values"-the Value of Life itself—was apprehended before the dawn of thinking, and is still apprehended independently of thinking. It is good, Plato will have us believe, to appeal sometimes from the world of the senses and scientific understanding, which is "too much with us," to this deep-lying part of human nature, as to an oracle. The responses of the oracle are not given in articulate language which the scientific understanding can interpret; they come as dreams, and must be received as dreams, without thought of doctrinal interpretation. Their ultimate meaning is the "feeling" which fills us in beholding them; and when we wake from them, we see our daily concerns and all things temporal with purged eyes. This effect which Plato produces by the Myth in the Dialogue is, it is hardly necessary to say, produced, in various 1 ὁ φιλόμυθος φιλόσοφός πώς ἐστιν.—Arist. Met. Λ 2, 982 b 18. degrees, by Nature herself, without the aid of literary or other art. The sense of "might, majesty and dominion" which comes over us as we look into the depths of the starry sky,1 the sense of our own short time passing, passing, with which we see the lilacs bloom again-these, and many like them, are natural experiences which closely resemble the effect produced in the reader's mind by Plato's art. When these natural moods are experienced, we feel "That which was, and is, and ever shall be" overshadowing us; and familiar things-the stars, and the lilac bloom-become suddenly strange and wonderful, for our eyes are opened to see that they declare its presence. It is such moods of feeling in his cultivated reader that Plato induces, satisfies, and regulates, by Myths which set forth God, Soul, and Cosmos, in vision. The essential charm of these Myths is that of Poetry generally, whether the theme of a poem be expressly eschatological and religious, like that of the Divina Commedia, or of some other kind, for example, like that of the Fairy Queene, or like that of a love song. The essential charm of all Poetry, for the sake of which in the last resort it exists, lies in its power of inducing, satisfying, and regulating what may be called Transcendental Feeling, especially that form of Transcendental Feeling which manifests itself as solemn sense of Timeless Being-of "That which was, and is, and ever shall be," overshadowing us with its presence. Where this power is absent from a piece-be it an epic, or a lyric, or a play, or a poem of observation and reflection-there is no Poetry; only, at best, readable verse, an exhibition of wit and worldly wisdom, of interesting " anthropology," of pleasing sound,—all either helpful or necessary, in their several places, for the production of the milieu in which poetic effect is felt, but none of them forming part of that effect itself. Sometimes the power of calling up Transcendental Feeling seems to be exercised at no point or points which can be definitely indicated in the course of a poem; this is notably the case where the form of the poem is dramatic, i.e. where all turns on our grasping "one complete action." Sometimes "a lonely word " 1 Coleridge says (Anima Poetae, from unpublished note-books of S. T. Coleridge, edited by E. H. Coleridge, 1895; p. 125), "Deep sky is, of all visual impressions, the nearest akin to a feeling. It is more a feeling than a sight, or rather, it is the melting away and entire union of feeling and sight!" makes the great difference. At any rate, elaborate dreamconsciousness apparatus, such as we find employed in the Platonic Myths, in the Divina Commedia, and in poems like Endymion and Hyperion, is not essential to the full exercise of the power of Poetry. Some common scene is simply pictured for the mind's eye; some place haunted by memories and emotions is pictured for the heart; a face declaring some mood is framed in circumstances which match it and its mood; some fantasia of sound or colour fills eye or ear; some sudden stroke of personification amazes us; there is perhaps nothing more than the turn of a phrase or the use of a word or the falling of a cadence—and straightway all is done that the most elaborate and sustained employment of mythological apparatus could do-we are away in the dream-world; and when we presently return, we are haunted by the feeling that we have "seen the mysteries "by that Transcendental Feeling which Dante finds language to express in the twenty-fifth sonnet of the Vita Nuova,1 and in the last canto of the Paradiso : O abbondante grazia, ond' io presunsi Ficcar lo viso per la luce eterna Credo ch' io vidi, perchè più di largo, Un punto solo m' è maggior letargo, Che venticinque secoli alla impresa, Che fe' Nettuno ammirar l'ombra d' Argo.2 Let me give some examples from the Poets of their employment of the means which I have just now mentioned. A common scene is simply pictured for the mind's eye: Sole listener, Duddon ! to the breeze that played 1 See infra, p. 38, where this sonnet is quoted. Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy mound- Mid sheltering pines, this cottage rude and grey; Sometimes, again, the scene is pictured for the heart rather than for the eye-we look upon a place haunted, for the Poet, and after him for ourselves, by memories and emotions: Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row! So they row'd, and there we landed—“ O venusta Sirmio!" Again, it is a face that we see declaring some mood, and framed in circumstances which match it and its mood: At eve a dry cicala sung, There came a sound as of the sea; Large Hesper glitter'd on her tears, And deepening thro' the silent spheres Heaven over Heaven rose the night. Again, some fantasia of sound or light fills ear or eye,— of sound, like this: Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the skylark sing; Sometimes all little birds that are, |