And now let us ask what relation any work of literary art ought to have to our lives of toil. If it merely gives us a picture of our actual lives it cannot be interesting or amusing, since we want to get away from ourselves and exercise new faculties and have new experiences. On the other hand, we understand only what we live, and if we get too far away from our own experiences we are equally at a loss. The fact is, a work of literature should give us ourselves idealized and in a dream, all we wished to be but could not be, all we hoped for but missed. True literature rounds out our lives, gives us consolation for our failures, rebuke for our vices, suggestions for our ambition, hope, and love, and appreciation. To do that it should have truth, nobility, and beauty in a high degree, and our first test of a work of literature should be to ask the three questions, Is it beautiful? Is it true? Is it noble? CHAPTER I. _WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD POEM?_ We may consider literature under three heads--Pure Poetry, the Prose Essay, and Fiction. Poetry is unquestionably the oldest form of literature. Matthew Arnold once queried whether a people ought not to be barbarous to be really poetic. Perhaps it originated in the chant of the priests as they offered sacrifices to their gods; but the chanted tale recounting the deeds of glorious war must have come very soon after. Mechanically, poetry consists in words arranged in measured feet and lines, corresponding almost exactly to the time element in music. Rhyme is a modern invention and in no way essential to poetry. Originally anything that could be chanted or sung was regarded as poetry. Now the song element has largely disappeared, but the requirement of measured feet and lines remains, and we may almost say that no poetry can be fully appreciated till it is read aloud. Poetry was invented to express lofty sentiments, sentiments of religion and the noble sentiments of patriotism and brave deeds, and finally the sentiments of passionate love. It is still the loftiest form of literature, and if we would seize at a grasp all the length and breadth of the highest literary art, we should begin with the study of poetry. True literature should express equally Truth, Nobility, and Beauty, the intellectual, the ethical, and the esthetic. Of course one poem will be pre-eminent for its beauty, another for its nobility, a third for its truth. Let us examine various types, that we may see with our own eyes and feel with our own hearts what these words mean. Read aloud this lullaby from Tennyson’s _Princess_: Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.