outward action, save the one action of giving vent to what he feels, of finding poetic expression for the vision with which his imagination is filled. In this we see the distinction between the Poet and those other men of intense soul, who share with him the power of vivid apprehension, of making real through the imagination whatever truths they see at all. They carry that truth which they have imaginatively apprehended into the region of the passions and the will, and rest not till they have condensed it into outward action. He keeps the truths which he sees within the confines of imagination, and is impelled by his peculiar nature to seek a vehicle for it, not in action but in song, or in some other form of artistic expression. And hence the practical danger which besets the Poet, and indeed all æsthetic and literary men, of becoming unreal, if that truth which they see and cultivate for artistic purposes they never try to embody in any form of practical action, any common purpose with their fellow-men. If then it be asked what are the proper objects of Poetry, what is the proper field for the exercise of the Poet’s art, the answer, supposing what I have said to be true, is, the whole range of existence; wherever the sensations, thoughts, feelings of man can travel, there the Poet may be at his side, and find material for his faculties to work on. The one condition of his working is, that the object pass out of the region of mere dry fact, or abstract notion, into the warm and breathing realm of imagination. What the mental process is by which objects cease to be mere dead facts, informations, and become imaged into living realities, I stay not to inquire. The whole philosophy of Imagination is a subject on which the metaphysicians have as yet said little that is helpful.