But in subjects so handled, however skillfully, or with however vivid an array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or nakedness, which repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably required--first, some amount of complexity, or more properly, adaptation; and, secondly, some amount of suggestiveness--some undercurrent, however indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in especial, which imparts to a work of art so much of that _richness_ (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) which we are too fond of confounding with _the ideal_. It is the _excess_ of the suggested meaning--it is the rendering this the upper instead of the under current of the theme--which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists. Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of the poem--their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the narrative which has preceded them. The undercurrent of meaning is rendered first apparent in the lines-- "'Take thy beak from out _my heart_, and take thy form from off my door!' Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore!'" It will be observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer, "Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as emblematical--but it is not until the very last line of the very last stanza, that the intention of making him emblematical of _Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance_ is permitted distinctly to be seen: "And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul _from out that shadow_ that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted--nevermore." BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES This is the new version of the _Panem et Circenses_ of the Roman populace. It is our _ultimatum_, as that was theirs. They must have something to eat, and the circus-shows to look at. We must have something to eat, and the papers to read.