impulse.  That does not make the least difference in the value of the highest results of that passion.  We might say the very same thing about any human emotion; every emotion can be evolutionally traced back to simple and selfish impulses shared by man with the lower animals.  But, because an apple tree or a pear tree happens to have its roots in the ground, does that mean that its fruits are not beautiful and wholesome?  Most assuredly we must not judge the fruit of the tree from the unseen roots; but what about turning up the ground to look at the roots?  What becomes of the beauty of the tree when you do that?  The realist—­at least the French realist—­likes to do that.  He likes to bring back the attention of his reader to the lowest rather than to the highest, to that which should be kept hidden, for the very same reason that the roots of a tree should be kept underground if the tree is to live.

The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of passion; it represents the artistic zone in which the poet or romance writer ought to be free to do the very best that he can.  He may go beyond that zone; but then he has only two directions in which he can travel.  Above it there is religion, and an artist may, like Dante, succeed in transforming love into a sentiment of religious ecstasy.  I do not think that any artist could do that to-day; this is not an age of religious ecstasy.  But upwards there is no other way to go.  Downwards the artist may travel until he finds himself in hell.  Between the zone of idealism and the brutality of realism there are no doubt many gradations.  I am only indicating what I think to be an absolute truth, that in treating of love the literary master should keep to the period of illusion, and that to go below it is a dangerous undertaking.  And now, having tried to make what are believed to be proper distinctions between great literature on this subject and all that is not great, we may begin to study a few examples.  I am going to select at random passages from English poets and others, illustrating my meaning.

Tennyson is perhaps the most familiar to you among poets of our own time; and he has given a few exquisite examples of the ideal sentiment in passion.  One is a concluding verse in the beautiful song that occurs in the monodrama of “Maud,” where the lover, listening in the garden, hears the steps of his beloved approaching.

  She is coming, my own, my sweet,
    Were it ever so airy a tread,
  My heart would hear her and beat,
    Were it earth in an earthy bed;
  My dust would hear her and beat,
    Had I lain for a century dead;
  Would start and tremble under her feet,
    And blossom in purple and red.