me in both. The English ballad soberly turns into an incurable fit of ague inflicted on a greedy young boor; the Italian witch-poetess, with finer sense, or with more sympathy for the heroine, casts the brute aside without further mention, andapotheosises the maiden, identifying her with the Moon. The former is more practical and probable, the latter more poetical. And here it is worth while, despite digression, to remark what an immense majority there are of people who can perceive, feel, and value poetry in mere words or form - that is to say, objectively - and hardly know or note it when it is presented subjectively or as thought, but notput into some kind of verse or measure, or regulated form. This is a curious experiment and worth studying. Take a passage from some famouspoet; write it out in pure simple prose, doing full justice to its realmeaning, and if it still actually thrills or moves as poetry, then it is of the first class. But if it has lost its glamour absolutely, it is second rate or inferior; for the best cannot be made out of mere words varnished with associations, be they of thought or feeling. This is not such a far cry from the subject as might be deemed. Reading and feeling them subjectively, I am often struck by the fact thatin these Witch traditions which I have gathered, there is a wondrous poetryof thought, which far excels the efforts of many modern bards, and whichonly requires the aid of some clever workman in words to assume the highestrank. A proof of what I have asserted may be found in the fact that, in such famous poems as the Finding of the Lyre, by James Russell Lowell, and that on the invention of the pipe by Pan, by Mrs. Browning, that which formed the most exquisite and refined portion ofthe original myths is omitted by both authors, simply because they missed or did not perceive it. For in the former we are not told that it was thebreathing of the god Air (who was the inspiring...
