Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring emotion.  There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her thoughts.  She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel.  And, although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant admit any veracity in the thought.  “As if,” she says,—­“I know he means nothing of the kind; but it does verily seem as if.”  The reader will find, by examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen’s character is throughout consistent in this clear though passionate strength.[73]

It then being, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all respects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion of Truth is entire, over this, as over every other natural and just state of the human mind, we may go on to the subject for the dealing with which this prefatory inquiry became necessary; and why necessary, we shall see forthwith.

  [52] Three short sections discussing the use of the terms “Objective”
  and “Subjective” have been omitted from the beginning of this chapter.

[53] Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her Recollections of a Literary Life. [Ruskin.] From Astraea, a Poem delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College.  The passage in which these lines are found was later published as Spring.

  [54] Kingsley’s Alton Locke, chap. 26.

[55] I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders I mean the creative (Shakspere, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson).  But both of these must be first-rate in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in quality no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind.  There is quite enough of the best,—­much more than we can ever read or enjoy in the length of a life; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber us with inferior work.  I have no patience with apologies made by young pseudo-poets, “that they believe there is some good in what they have written:  that they hope to do better in time,” etc. Some good!  If there is not all good, there is no good.  If they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble us now?  Let them rather courageously burn all they have done, and wait for the better days.  There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be presentable.  But men of sense know better than so to waste their time; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the master’s hand on the chords too well to fumble among them after him.  Nay, more than this, all inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes,