Is Memory indeed the only Muse? Not unless she is a far grander figure than we ordinarily suppose. Of course she has been exalted by certain artists. There is Richard Wagner, with his definition of art as memory of one's past youth, or--to stay closer home--Wordsworth, with his theory of poetry as emotion recollected in tranquillity,--such artists have a high regard for memory. Still, Oliver Wendell Holmes is tolerably representative of the nineteenth century attitude when he points memory to a second place. It is only the aged poet, conscious that his powers are decaying, to whom Holmes offers the consolation, Live in the past; await no more The rush of heaven-sent wings; Earth still has music left in store While memory sighs and sings. [Footnote: _Invita Minerva_.] But, though he would discourage us from our attempt to chain his genius, like a ghost, to his past life in this world, the poet is inclined to admit that Mnemosyne, in her true grandeur, has a fair claim to her title as mother of the muses. The memories of prosaic men may be, as we have described them, short and sordid, concerned only with their existence here and now, but the recollection of poets is a divine thing, reaching back to the days when their spirits were untrammeled by the body, and they gazed upon ideal beauty, when, as Plato says, they saw a vision and were initiated into the most blessed mysteries ... beholding apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy as in a mystery; shining in pure light, pure themselves and not yet enshrined in the living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, as in an oyster shell. [Footnote: _Phaedrus_, 250.] For the poet is apt to transfer Plato's praise of the philosopher to himself, declaring that "he alone has wings, and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is." [Footnote: _Ibid_., 249.] If the poet exalts memory to this station, he may indeed claim that he is not furtively adoring his own petty powers, when he reverences the visions which Mnemosyne vouchsafes to him. And indeed Plato's account of memory is congenial to many poets. Shelley is probably the most serious of the nineteenth century singers in claiming an ideal life for the soul, before its birth into this world. [Footnote: See _Prince Athanase_. For Matthew Arnold's views, see _Self Deception_.] Wordsworth's adherence to this view is as widely known as the _Ode on Immortality_. As an explanation for inspiration, the theory recurs in verse of other poets. One writer inquires, Are these wild thoughts, thus fettered in my rhymes, Indeed the product of my heart and brain? [Footnote: Henry Timrod, _Sonnet_.] and decides that the only way to account for the occasional gleams of insight in his verse is by assuming a prenatal life for the soul. Another maintains of poetry,