is reduced to the standard of real and contemporary existence; while Bismarck, who, if we knew him, would probably turn out to be a comparatively simple character, is invested with all the qualities which have ever been attributed to the typical statesman, and is clearly as imaginative a personage as the Marquis of Posa, in Schiller’s “Don Carlos.”  We are ready to accept any coup de theatre of him.  Now, this prepossession is precisely that for which the imagination of the poet makes us ready by working on our own.

But there are also lower levels on which this idealization plays its tricks upon our fancy.  The Greek, who had studied profoundly what may be called the machinery of art, made use even of mechanical contrivances to delude the imagination of the spectator, and to entice him away from the associations of everyday life.  The cothurnus lifted the actor to heroic stature, the mask prevented the ludicrous recognition of a familiar face in “Oedipus” and “Agamemnon”; it precluded grimace, and left the countenance as passionless as that of a god; it gave a more awful reverberation to the voice, and it was by the voice, that most penetrating and sympathetic, one might almost say incorporeal, organ of expression, that the great effects of the poet and tragic actor were wrought.  Everything, you will observe, was, if not lifted above, at any rate removed, however much or little, from the plane of the actual and trivial.  Their stage showed nothing that could be met in the streets.  We barbarians, on the other hand, take delight precisely in that.  We admire the novels of Trollope and the groups of Rogers because, as we say, they are so real, while it is only because they are so matter-of-fact, so exactly on the level with our own trivial and prosaic apprehensions.  When Dante lingers to hear the dispute between Sinon and Master Adam, Virgil, type of the higher reason and the ideal poet, rebukes him, and even angrily.

  E fa ragion ch’io ti sia sempre allato
  Si piu avvien che fortuna t’ accoglia
  Ove sien genti in simigliante piato;
  Che voler cio udire e bassa voglia.

  Remember, I am always at thy side,
  If ever fortune bring thee once again
  Where there are people in dispute like this,
  For wishing to hear that is vulgar wish.

Verse is another of these expedients for producing that frame of mind, that prepossession, on the part of hearer or reader which is essential to the purpose of the poet, who has lost much of his advantage by the invention of printing, which obliges him to appeal to the eye rather than the ear.  The rhythm is no arbitrary and artificial contrivance.  It was suggested by an instinct natural to man.  It is taught him by the beating of his heart, by his breathing, hastened or retarded by the emotion of the moment.  Nay, it may be detected by what seems the most monotonous of motions, the flow of water, in which, if you listen intently, you will discover a beat as regular as that