philosophy, introducing us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character, behaviour and action." The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: for this same influencing of the soul—φυχαγωγια[6] (a beautiful word)—is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of children unhappy: it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning them into prigs dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers of the Church lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much Philosophus as to compare the Philosopher, in mooving, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney-corner."

"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."—For having stripped the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway in a stanza of Sir John 

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