And what becomes of artistic form in the hands of such a school?  Just what was to be expected.  It is impossible to give outward form to that which is in its very nature formless, like doubt and discontent.  For on such subjects thought itself is not defined; it has no limit, no self-coherence, not even method or organic law.  And in a poem, as in all else, the body must be formed according to the law of the inner life; the utterance must be the expression, the outward and visible antetype of the spirit which animates it.  But where the thought is defined by no limits, it cannot express itself in form, for form is that which has limits.  Where it has no inward unity it cannot have any outward one.  If the spirit be impatient of all moral rule, its utterance will be equally impatient of all artistic rule; and thus, as we are now beginning to discover from experience, the poetry of doubt will find itself unable to use those forms of verse which have been always held to be the highest—­ tragedy, epic, the ballad, and lastly, even the subjective lyrical ode.  For they, too, to judge by every great lyric which remains to us, require a groundwork of consistent self-coherent belief; and they require also an appreciation of melody even more delicate, and a verbal polish even more complete than any other form of poetic utterance.  But where there is no melody within, there will be no melody without.  It is in vain to attempt the setting of spiritual discords to physical music.  The mere practical patience and self-restraint requisite to work out rhythm when fixed on, will be wanting; nay, the fitting rhythm will never be found, the subject itself being arhythmic; and thus we shall have, or, rather, alas! do have, a wider and wider divorce of sound and sense, a greater and greater carelessness for polish, and for the charm of musical utterance, and watch the clear and spirit-stirring melodies of the older poets swept away by a deluge of half-metrical prose-run-mad, diffuse, unfinished, unmusical, to which any other metre than that in which it happens to have been written would have been equally appropriate, because all are equally inappropriate.  Where men have nothing to sing, it is not of the slightest consequence how they sing it.

While poets persist in thinking and writing thus, it is in vain for them to talk loud about the poet’s divine mission, as the prophet of mankind, the swayer of the universe, and so forth.  Not that we believe the poet simply by virtue of being a singer to have any such power.  While young gentlemen are talking about governing heaven and earth by verse, Wellingtons and Peels, Arkwrights and Stephensons, Frys, and Chisholms, are doing it by plain practical prose; and even of those who have moved and led the hearts of men by verse, every one, as far as we know, has produced his magical effects by poetry of the very opposite forum to that which is now in fashion.  What poet ever had more influence than Homer?  What poet is more