all reservations have been made, there remain in the thoughts of all of us respecting poetry some glimmerings and decays, at least, of the idea of inspiration. It is the vogue nowadays, when any question is asked with regard to the soul, to apply first to the anthropologist; and, indeed, to inquire concerning the history of an idea is one of the best means to inform ourselves of its meaning. It might be pleasant to enter the charmed circle of the Greek myth, to listen for snatches of Lityerses' song like music before dawn, and have sight of Orpheus, a shining figure on the border of the morning; but such a procedure would only discredit our argument. It is necessary to go to the anthropologist and be wise.

What does the student of primitive man tell of poetry at her birth? In place of the divine child, upon whose mouth bees clung in the cradle, what does the anthropologist show us? He shows us the dancing horde. "On festal occasions," says a recent writer, "the whole horde meets by night round the camp-fire for a dance. Men and women alternating form a circle; each dancer lays

his arms about the necks of his two neighbors, and the entire ring begins to turn to the right or to the left, while all the dancers stamp strongly and in rhythm the foot that is advanced, and drag after it the other foot. Now with drooping heads they press closer and closer together; now they widen the circle. Throughout the dance resounds a monotonous song." The song is sometimes one sound interminably repeated; sometimes it is more extended, as, for example, the words "Good hunting," or "Now we have something to eat," or "Brandy is good." In that undifferentiated, homogeneous social state called the horde, there was no poet, just as there were no other men with particular callings; but all the horde were poets; and this, which I have read, was their poetry. Such is the anthropologist's account, and it is a true account. Indeed, it is plain from the evidence that primitive men found many utilities in rhythmical expression. Rhythm was used to mark time in joint labor and on the march, as it is still employed by sailors, boatmen, and soldiers; the songs of labor and of war have this origin; and in that primeval

time, when language was hardly formed upon the lips of men, rhythm was the means by which the joint expression of emotion was effected on festive occasions. Rhythm was, so far as expression was concerned, the social bond. Lying on the sands at the base of the pyramids, or amid the ruins of Luxor, as the afternoon wore on, I have heard the chant begin among the throng of workmen, and as they hurried by with their baskets of earth it was no fancy for me to believe that in their shrill, unceasing, and ever louder cry I listened to the cradle hymn of poetry.

If one looks at the matter more closely, the seeming gap between these sharply opposed conceptions of the divine poet and the singing and dancing horde begins to disappear. Greek tradition itself gives the clew to their reconciliation. Socrates, in the passage which I have quoted, compares the poet to the wild Bacchic revellers in their frenzy, that is, to what is no more nor less than the singing horde of Dionysus in their sacred orgy. The history of the Greek stage shows clearly how tragedy was developed from an original joint exercise about

the altar of Dionysus, in which all united; it was only by the gradual change of time that the assembly fell apart into the audience on one side and the performers on the other, and even then, you know, the chorus remained as the delegate of the whole assembly until in turn it also yielded to the ever increasing function of the actors, and theatrical individuality in dramatic performances was fully developed. Without entering upon detail, the Greek tradition indicates the evolution of poetry from its social form as the joint rhythm of the horde to its individual form as the song of the divine poet who held all others silent when he discoursed. In this evolution the poetic energy itself remains the same, however much its form may change; whatever explanation may be given, whether it be regarded as divine or human, the phenomenon is continuous and identical.

The first radical trait of poetry throughout is the presence of emotion; and this to so marked a degree that it is characteristically described as madness. Civilized men sometimes forget the immense sphere of emotion in the history of the race. It is still

familiar to us in the actions of mobs, in the blind fury or blind panic to which swarms of men are subject. In history we read of such emotion seizing on the people as in the time of the Flagellants, who went about scourging themselves in the streets, or generally in periods of revolutionary enthusiasm. Such emotion is known to us, also, in orgiastic or devotional dances, in the old-fashioned revivals, and in the fury of battle that possesses every nation when its chiefs have declared war. This is the broad emotional power in the race that is the fountain of poetry. Emotion is far older than intellect in human life; and even now reason plays but a faint and faltering part in human affairs. If in the civilized portions of the world the ungoverned outburst is less than it was, or seems less, it is mainly because in civilization emotion has found fixed channels.

This emotion, which is the fountain of poetry, it should be observed, is the broad fund of life; it is nothing individual; it is always shared emotion. The second radical trait of poetic energy, therefore, is that it is social. The poet, however aloof he may be, is always