Not only is it true that the vitality of poets and prose writers, the conceptive power of scientists, inventors, and business organizers, depend upon the fertility and strength of the imagination, but throughout the broader reaches of common humanity this power is everywhere present--constructive and creative. Max Müller has shown that the root words of language are imbedded in metaphor, that "Language is fossil poetry." Again, the mythologies of the different races, grand and stately, or fair and lovely, are the immediate product of the folk mind. It has been said that "The man of culture is preëminently a man of imagination." But the kind of mental alertness, freedom, and joy which is suggested by the term _culture_ may spring up in the heart of every boy and girl endowed with a modicum of human nature. Hamilton Wright Mabie, in his "Books and Culture" (pp. 148-149), says:-- "The development of the imagination, upon the power of which both absorption of knowledge and creative capacity depend, is, therefore, a matter of supreme importance. To this necessity educators will some day open their eyes, and educational systems will some day conform; meantime, it must be done mainly by individual work. Knowledge, discipline, and technical training of the best sort are accessible on every hand; but the development of the faculty which unites all these in the highest form of activity must be secured mainly by personal effort. The richest and most accessible material for this highest education is furnished by art; and the form of art within reach of every civilized man, at all times, in all places, is the book. To these masterpieces, which have been called the books of life, all men may turn with the assurance that as the supreme achievements of the imagination they have the power of awakening, stimulating, and enriching it in the highest degree." Besides the strong thread of truth and the work of the swift-glancing shuttle of imagination, the woven fabric of the literary master must show a beauteous pattern or form. The melody and music of poetry spring from a rhythmic form. Apparently stiff and formal, it is yet the consensus of critics that only through this channel can the soul of truth and beauty escape from the poet, and manifest itself to others. Says George Willis Cooke, "The poet worships at the triple shrine of beauty, love, and truth; and his mission is to teach men that all other objects and places of veneration are but faint imitations of this one form of faith." But the spirit of this worship can best embody itself in the poetic form. Schlegel, in his "Dramatic Art and Literature" (p. 340), says:--