clumsy doctrine, which we only mention here, because Ariosto would furnish the best example of all among the poets, against the exclusion of poetry from among the arts which alone were able to portray the rhythm of the Universe or Harmony: Ariosto, who, if he had seemed to an Italian philologist to be nothing less than "a poet who was an excellent observer and reasoner," has yet appeared to Humboldt, whose ear was more sensitive to the especially "musical" _musikalisch,_ and to Vischer more especially as one who developed his fables of chivalry 41 in a melodious labyrinth of images, which produced in its sensual serenity the same enjoyment as the rocking and dying of the Italian "canzone," thus giving the reader "the pure pleasure of moving without matter." When empirical classifications are not handled with caution and with a consciousness of their limits, not only do they deprive the principles of science of their rigour and vigour, but also carry with them the unfortunate result of making it seem possible to distinguish concretely what has been roughly divided for the purpose of aiding the creation of images. The double class of poets and of artists, the one moved by particular affections, the other by universal Harmony, does not hold as a logical duality, because the love of Harmony is itself one of many particular affections, and forms part of the series comprising the comic, tragic, humorous, melancholy, jocose, pessimistic, passionate, realistic, classicistic poets, and so on. But even when it has been reduced to the level of the others, there is no necessity, either in its case or in that of the others, to fall into the illusion that there really exist poets who are only tragic or only comic, only realistic or only classicistic, singers only of Harmony, without the other passions, or solely passionate without the passion for Harmony. The love of traditional forms, for example, which we have seen to be the base of classicism, exists in a certain measure in every poet, for the reason that every poet employs, re-lives and renews the words of a given language, which has been historically formed, and is therefore charged with a literary tradition and full of historical meaning. And the love of Harmony exists also in every poet worthy of the name, since he cannot represent his drama of the affections, save as a particular mode of drama and of the dramatic or dialectic cosmic Harmony, which is therefore contained and dwells in it as the universal in the particular.