with two subjects, I do not know. But he mixed his Calvinism and his biology, and began talking of shells and crystals and function and structure and protective mimicry on Sundays, to the equal horror of sound theologians and sound biologists. Yet, in spite of these admissions and experiences, you may be surprised when I tell you that I think metaphor, well and fitly employed, the nearest approach to absolute truth of which the human mind is capable. Now do you think I had better write your history?
Hist. You certainly amaze me. I did not think that a poet or an artist could be so easily gulled by the mere tools of his craft. Of course I know that men of science who stray into the realm of poetic imagination are the dupes of many a fine figure and specious similitude. But for a poet, who works the marionettes, to believe that they are alive! It is incredible—much as if a painter should expect the fortune of Pygmalion.
Poet. A man of science who wanders into poetry is usually looking for arguments or facts, and these, as I have admitted, he will not find. Sooner a leg of mutton in a gin-shop, as Shelley remarked. But for the poet himself poetry, and especially metaphor, is the nearest approach to truth. Have you never heard a painter maintain that a good portrait is better than the sitter?
Hist. A passable after-dinner remark. Some one must start the hare; that hare would soon be run down. This much is clear to me, Poetry is truth clothed in the vesture of beauty. You must first find your truth, and then choose the best possible way of dressing it.
Poet. That is the way in which Hume or Buckle would try to write poetry. In something the same way George Eliot actually did write verse. She was a clever woman, and the imitation deceived good judges. But poetry has never been written in that way, and it never will. For to a poet the thought and the figurein
