Yes--as Love is truer far Than all other things; so are Life and Death, the World and Time Mere false shows in some great Mime By dreadful mystery sublime. But at the end Tasso's faith is troubled, and he ponders, For were life no flitting dream, Were things truly what they seem, Were not all this world-scene vast But a shade in Time's stream glassed; Were the moods we now display Less phantasmal than the clay In which our poor spirits clad Act this vision, wild and sad, I must be mad, mad,--how mad! However, this is aside from the point. The average poet is as firmly convinced as any philosopher that his visions are true. It is only the manner of his inspiration that causes him to doubt his sanity. Not merely is his mind vacant when the spirit of poetry is about to come upon him, but he is deprived of his judgment, so that he does not understand his own experiences during ecstasy. The idea of verbal inspiration, which used to be so popular in Biblical criticism, has been applied to the works of all poets. [Footnote: See _Kathrina_, by J. G. Holland, where the heroine maintains that the inspiration of modern poets is similar to that of the Old Testament prophets, and declares, As for the old seers Whose eyes God touched with vision of the life Of the unfolding ages, I must doubt Whether they comprehended what they saw.] Such a view has been a boon to literary critics. Shakespeare commentators, in particular, have been duly grateful for the lee-way granted them, when they are relieved from the necessity of limiting Shakespeare's meanings to the confines of his knowledge. As for the poet's own sense of his incomprehension, Francis Thompson's words are typical. Addressing a little child, he wonders at the statements she makes, ignorant of their significance; then he reflects, And ah, we poets, I misdoubt Are little more than thou. We speak a lesson taught, we know not how, And what it is that from us flows The hearer better than the utterer knows. [Footnote: _Sister Songs._]