with this incentive to the highest exercise of
the descriptive part of their art. Passages
about the dawn are to be found in abundance in
all poets—some of them, passages of great
beauty; but with a few exceptions,they are not
equaI to the mingled grandeur and tenderness
of the occasion. It is to be suspected that
scholasticism has had a great deal to do with
the defect among our old writers. They too
often thought of what the classics said on the
subject, instead of simply asking their own
hearts what the thing itself said to them. They
could not get rid of Aurora and Phoebus and
Tithonus—- very accomplished, well-behaved
persons, no doubt, and very pretty company at the
right season; but, in front of the mighty verities
of Nature, somewhat tawdry and impertinent.
For the same reason, our early poets
harped upon a series of common-places about
"sprinkling roses," " hurling golden beams
through the air," " stepping across the eastern
threshold;" " the gate of heaven," " the
coursers of the sun," " the chariot of Sol,"
and so forth. It is wonderful to find how
constantly these set figures are repeated, not only by
one author, but by many authors. The members of
the poetical guild seem to have accepted such
phrases as a kind of legal tender or current coin
of the realm, and to have regarded them as
all-sufficient; though in truth they are violent
metaphors, and thrust out of sight that which
is a great deal finer, because simple and true.

Let us illustrate our meaning by quoting a
well-known passage from Spenser's Faery
Queene—- beautiful in itself, but not of the
highest kind of beauty:

At last, the golden Oriental gate
Of greatest heaven 'gan to open faire,
And Phoebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate,
Came dancing forth, shaking his dewy haire,
And hurl'd his glistering beames through gloomy aire.
                                                       (Book I. c.5.)

Or take another passage from the same poem,
still more exquisite, but, of the like figurative
kind, and manifestly based rather upon the
poet's reading than upon his observation and.
perception:

The joyous day 'gan early to appear,
And fayre Aurora from the dewy bed
Of aged Tithone 'gan herself to reare,
With rosy cheekes, for shame as blushing red:
Her golden locks for haste were loosely shed
About her eares, when Una her did marke
Clymbe to her charet, all with flowers spred,
From heaven high to chase the cheerlesse darke:
With merry note her lowd salutes the mounting larke.
                                                  (Book 1. c. 11.)

Assuredly, no one who has any sense of
poetry will dispute for a moment the
loveliness of that stanza, considered as a picture
from the Greek mythology, or as a piece of
music. But it is not a description of morning
as morning shows itself to the eyes of one who,
leaving his books behind him, and the Greek
mythology with them, goes forth into the still
clear air of dawn, and looks towards the eastern
heavens. He will see no Aurora and no
Tithonus; no rosy cheeks or golden locks; no
chariots, and no horses of the sun. But he will
behold a mighty revelation of Eternal power,
harmony, and beauty, before which all
mythologies turn pale. Far be it from us to deny
the grace and human dignity  (human, but
bordering on the Divine, as humanity at its highest
always does) to be found in the old religion of
the Hellenes. Still, the truth of Nature is to
be preferred.

That metaphor with respect to the day
"dancing forth" was a very favourite one, and
was often transferred to the morning star. Thus,
Milton writes, in his Song on May Morning:

   Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
    Comes dancing from the East.

And Giles Fletcher, in Christ's Victory and
Triumph, has an exquisite line with reference to
the same fancy:

       A star comes dancing up the Orient.

But, after all, it is mere fancy, answering to
no truth whatever. There is nothing in the
smallest degree analogous to " dancing" in
that bright still glorious planet; and, joyful
and vigorous as the image is, it is to be
regretted when it stands in the way of the far
nobler fact. If we turn to the greatest of
poets—to Shakespeare himself—we do not find
matters much improved. Let us see what the
Friar in Romeo and Juliet has to say about, the
dawn, with which he professes to be familiar:

The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
And fleckèd darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's pathway, made by Titan's wheels.

Here the second line is the best, because it is
the truest. The image by which the darkness
is represented reeling like a drunkard out of the
pathway of the light, is extravagant and coarse;
and the allusion to " Titan's wheels" is the old
schoolboy common-place, dragged in to make
out the line. The gradual, calm, orderly fading
away of the darkness before the advancing
light is far too beautiful and holy a thing to be
likened to the staggering of a belated reveller
before the coming lanterns of the watch; and
"Titan's wheels" really give the mind no definite
idea of any sort. Romeo himself does better:
  

          Look, love, what envious streaks
  Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East!
  Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
  Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

In this passage, as in the former, that part
which is most truthful is most poetical. The
"severing clouds" and "the misty mountain
tops" are phrases full of the spirit of morning:
but why should day be made a person? and
why should he stand tiptoe? Let it be
understood that this is not an objection to fancy (which
is part ot the very life of poetry), but to metaphors
which are incongruous and impertinent—
which represent nothing but the poet's reading,
and cannot be resolved into the plain truth of
things. In the like manner, a delicious line in
Milton's Lycidas is injured:

   While the still morn went out with sandals grey.