there is absolutely no common ground, of course. Such a poet finds the rigid ethical system of a rationalistic philosophy as uncharacteristic of the actual fluidity of the world as ever Cratylus did. Feeling, but not reason, may be swift enough in its transformations to mirror the world, such a poet believes, and he imitates the actual flux of things, not with a wagging of the thumb, like Cratylus, but with a flutter of the heart. Thus one finds Byron characteristically asserting, "I hold virtue, in general, or the virtues generally, to be only in the disposition, each a _feeling,_ not a principle." [Footnote: _Letter to Charles Dallas,_ January 21, 1808.] On the other hand, one occasionally meets a point of view as opposite as that of Poe, who believed that the poet, no less than the philosopher, is governed by reason solely,--that the poetic imagination is a purely intellectual function. [Footnote: See the _Southern Literary Messenger,_ II, 328, April, 1836.] The philosopher could have no quarrel with him. Between the two extremes are the more thoughtful of the Victorian poets,--Browning, Tennyson, Arnold, Clough, whose taste leads them so largely to intellectual pursuits that it is difficult to say whether their principles of moral conduct arise from the poetical or the philosophical part of their natures. The most profound utterances of poets on this subject, however, show them to be, not rationalists, but thoroughgoing Platonists. The feeling in which they trust is a Platonic intuition which includes the reason, but exists above it. At least this is the view of Shelley, and Shelley has, more largely than any other man, moulded the beliefs of later English poets. It is because he judges imaginative feeling to be always in harmony with the deepest truths perceived by the reason that he advertises his intention to purify men by awakening their feelings. Therefore, in his preface to _The Revolt of Islam_ he says "I would only awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true virtue." in the preface to the _Cenci,_ again, he declares, "Imagination is as the immortal God which should take flesh for the redemption of human passion." The poet, while thus expressing absolute faith in the power of beauty to redeem the world, yet is obliged to take into account the Platonic distinction between the beautiful and the lover of the beautiful. [Footnote: _Symposium,_ Sec. 204.]