第460页 / 共1391页

In the present stage of the human mind, poetry and other forms of

fiction may certainly be regarded as a good. But we can also

imagine the existence of an age in which a severer conception of

truth has either banished or transformed them. At any rate we

must admit that they hold a different place at different periods

of the world's history. In the infancy of mankind, poetry, with

the exception of proverbs, is the whole of literature, and the

only instrument of intellectual culture; in modern times she is

the shadow or echo of her former self, and appears to have a

precarious existence. Milton in his day doubted whether an epic

poem was any longer possible. At the same time we must remember,

that what Plato would have called the charms of poetry have been

partly transferred to prose; he himself (Statesman) admits

rhetoric to be the handmaiden of Politics, and proposes to find

in the strain of law (Laws) a substitute for the old poets.