IV

Now I should tell you, Gentlemen, that I hold such utterances as this last—whatever you may think of the utterances of the Botocudos—to be exorbitant: that I distrust all attempts to build up (say) "Paradise Lost" historically from the yells and capers of recondite savages. 'Life is real, life is earnest' may be no better aesthetically (I myself think it a little better) than 'Now we have something to eat' 'Brandy is good' may rival Pindar's [Greek: Arioton men udor], and indeed puts what it contains of truth with more of finality, less of provocation (though Pindar at once follows up [Greek: Arioton men udor] with exquisite poetry): but you cannot—truly you cannot—exhibit the steps which lead up from 'Brandy is good' to such lines as

     Thus with the year
  Seasons return; but not to me returns
  Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
  Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
  Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.

I bend over the learned page pensively, and I seem to see a
Botocudo Professor—though not high 'in the social scale,' they
may have such things—visiting Cambridge on the last night of the
Lent races and reporting of its inhabitants as follows:

They pay scant heed to their chiefs: they live only for their immediate bodily needs, and take small thought for the morrow. On festal occasions the whole horde meets by night round the camp fire for a dance. Each dancer lays his arms about the necks of his two neighbours, stamping strongly with one foot and dragging the other after it. Now with drooping heads they press closer and closer together; now they widen the circle. Often one can hear nothing but a continually repeated kalanî aha, or again one hears short improvised songs in which we are told the doings of the day, the reasons for rejoicing, what not, as 'Good hunting,' 'Good old—'[naming a tribal God], or in former times 'Now we shall be but a short while,' or 'Woemma!' Now and then, too, an individual begins a song and is answered by the rest in chorus—such as

     For he is an estimable person
     Beyond possibility of gainsaying.

The chorus twice repeats this and asseverates that they are following a custom common to the flotilla, the expeditionary force, and even their rude seats of learning.

And Dr Gummere, or somebody else, comments: 'As the unprejudiced reader will see, this clear and admirable account confirms our hypothesis that in communal celebration we have at once the origin and model of three poems, "The Faerie Queene," "Paradise Lost" and "In Memoriam," recorded as having been composed by members of this very tribe.'

Although we have been talking of instincts, we are not concerned here with the steps by which the child, or the savage, following an instinct attains to write poetry; but, more modestly, with the instinct by which the child likes it, and the way in which he can be best encouraged to read and improve this natural liking. Nor are we even concerned here to define Poetry. It suffices our present purpose to consider Poetry as the sort of thing the poets write.

But obviously if we find a philosopher discussing poetry without any reference to children, and independently basing it upon the very same imitative instincts which we have noted in children, we have some promise of being on the right track.