I am thinking, among other things, of critical discoveries of Croce. Sometimes his discoveries are like the originality of finding how much more comfortable to live in is a house without a roof than one with a roof. Here is hoping Signor Croce always had his umbrella or lived in a land where rain did not fall! Marsden Hartley is a poet. He is sometimes prosy with his brush, but when he takes to pen and ink, he blossoms. There is the making of a charming stylist in Hartley, which is just what he would like to have us believe he disdains. Among his pictures, I have liked his tragic New England farms, black with accumulated terrors of puritan winters. I have liked his slender vases of crystal, holding a flower visioned to disappearing outline, where loveliness alone remains. This is gold. But gold circulates, is most useful, with admixture of alloy. Art is stenographic mind-reading of the trembling soul. It is the truth which living obscures, or makes us unable to see, because we are insensitive. One who has gentleness, sensitiveness, which are other names for fineness, feels and responds. It is not dependent upon intellect, sharpness of wit. It has to do with nobility. It is this critics neglect. It does not need book-learning. It needs the fine human instrument. This is about what Tolstoi meant when he declared it was for the people. Tolstoi spoke at a good time. It will not be long before all things will be for the people. The future belongs to them. There will no more be walled gardens. The idea for Rostand’s _Chanticleer_ was inspired largely by _The Birds_ of Aristophanes. Rostand was a borrower. Likewise from the same comedy, Leopardi, incomparable Greek scholar, took the idea for his essay on birds, in which he tries to fancy theirs the ideal life. The Greeks knew how to set words so they glow. Every time I re-read him I am surer there is nothing new. In _The Frogs_, in the journey of disguised Bacchus across Land of the Dead, we find initial idea of Dante’s Inferno; to be exact the _Pilgrimage Through Purgatory_. It is the same only under guise of another religion. There are a few books in which most printed art has its roots. Solomon was right. There is nothing new. There are only a few Homeric laughers. The exotic grace, the honeyed charm of Swinburne, came from Greek and French poets. No wonder the perfection of Swinburne made would-be poets take to new verse. It was hopeless to contend with him. When you reach the top of the hill there is nothing to do but go down. Swinburne reached the top of the mountain. _The long winged dapple swallows_, (Aristophanes), is a Swinburnian phrase. From the choruses of Euripides, he learned music, swift-swinging resonant movement. That breathless on-rushing, which no poet of today has, came from here. They are astonishingly alike in sound-quality. A poet is like what he admires. Love is a magnet in the world of mind.