and above, say, “sounding,” is something that it is not worth while to give; it is too specific, so that in poetry it acquires a certain kind of fatuity. “Gorgeous,” on the other hand, is not specific enough. The margin of meaning in it beyond some such word as bright or starry or shining or, perhaps, encrusted, is something known only vaguely to each person as he uses it, and not communicated in any definite way by the word itself. “Gorgeous roof” means nothing, in the sense that it is poetry’s obligation to mean something, that is not accounted for by “starry roof.” The added meaning remains something secret to Browning. It is of no use in this connection to talk about poetry being “suggestive.” The suggestive power of poetry should be something that compels us to an effort of the mind that results in the creation of a clear-cut image, not something directing us into a world of vague sensations and guesswork. Before proceeding to the next step in the analysis of the quality that I have claimed for Arnold, there is another group of words to be considered that might at first thought seem to be of the same kind as those just mentioned. Perhaps “magnificent” is as good an example as any. Why, it may be asked, should “magnificent” be suitable for poetic use if “gorgeous” is not? Clearly we are on very hazardous ground, but the way is, I think, none the less certain. We know that instinct has told the common practice of poetry to accept the one and to reject the other, and the instinct must have had some source in reason. Admitting that what we need in poetry is exact definition, it can, I think, be shown that there is this difference between the two words. “Gorgeous,” in itself, means (let us say) “splendid” plus some unknown degree of “splendour.” It is not a case of splendour of one kind plus--even though it be in an unknown degree--splendour of another. So that it depends for its very particularity upon a meaning that finally escapes us, and not even Milton with his “Gorgeous Tragedy” can quite subdue it to his art. But with “magnificent” this is not so. The meaning is still “splendid” (let us say) plus something, but the something is not now merely an undefined further quantity of “splendour.” It is, rather, a particular qualification of splendour which is derived from the context, and which, from the context, will nearly always be found to be imaginatively specific. Thus, when Wordsworth says-- Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee ...