" The message, then, which one Poet brings
home, is no esoteric one: as Johnson said of Gray's _Elegy_, "it abounds
with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to
which every bosom returns an echo." It exalts us through the best in us,
by telling it, not as anything new or strange, _but so as we recognise
it_.
* * * * *
And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every
bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted
indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised--the
emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of
emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an
emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the
desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is
(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been
discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a
[Greek: _storghe_] rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its
fatherhood. Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest
expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
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