We say that he transfigures the thoughts of other intelligences, that he turns his genius to the rhythmic expression of the towering fantasies of the philosopher. And he does. Poetry without thought would be a jingle--a word which, if we may trust the reviews, is a satisfactory account of much of the "minor" poetry of the day. If a man does not see somewhat deeper into himself and things than the average human being, never among the sacred band of lyric souls can he find a lasting place. Philosophy is the propaedeutic of poetry. But surely, it may be urged, the book of nature is open to every one, and a poet's soul may sing of that without any need of the philosopher's interpretation. Has not some of the sublimest verse been Nature poetry? True, but this undoubted fact only confirms our statement. When Wordsworth interprets nature in song, he is borrowing from a philosopher; he is reading the thoughts of an intelligence other than his own. He is revealing to you the innermost thoughts of that supreme Mind, who conceived the beautiful whole, and made it to be a thought of himself. The deepest thinker is he who thinks his thoughts into deeds. There is a First Philosopher as there is a First Poet or Maker, and because we are in our innermost selves of his kindred, we have the power to think his thoughts again, and create an ideal world which shall be the counterpart of his own. Men may be philosophers and poets because the First Poet and First Thinker is their Parent. This is not mysticism, still less imagination, but the soberest of realities. In it you read the interpretation of the indisputable fact that the world's greatest poets were men of intensely religious feeling. They come so near to the Supreme Poet that their sense of the Infinite is extraordinarily developed. It is gravely questionable whether a man can be a great poet unless the influence of his great prototype be a power in his life; unless his religious instincts be reverently cultivated. A religious sense is needful to the highest flights. Go over the greatest names of the past and present and you will see how "the Over-soul" has been the truest source of inspiration. The unknown singers of the Vedic hymns, Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, and in our days, Tennyson and Browning--in them all the religious sense, the instinct of communion with the unseen world, is a distinguishing mark and characteristic. A name here and there may be quoted on the other side, but as far as my memory serves me for the moment, it would appear on closer examination that such were exceptions only in appearance. An excess, not a defect, of reverential feeling is often the explanation of such non-manifestation of religious emotion as we may notice. With Goethe, they would appear to feel the presumption of individualising, the great Soul of the worlds by even so much as naming him. Who dare name him, and who confess I believe him!