A Famous Poet and Critic's Lis According to Plate "poetry is a kind of popular speaking." Plate was a wise man, and part of the wisdom herein expressed persists to this day, for the majority of our popular speakers deliver the mi selves more or less poetically—some of them without knowing it. It mentions Plato's definition in order that persons who imagine that the average poet is an obscure word twister, whose lucubrations are beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals, may take heart and be encouraged.
For the purpose we have in hand we may help ourselves also to another definition of poetry by Sir Philip Sidney. ''Poetry," says Sidney, is of all human learning the most ancient and of the most fatherly antiquity as from whence all other learnings have taken their beginnings." It is important that the second half of his statement be remembered. There is no humane learning that does not have its origins and the spirit that vitalizes it from poetry, - Literary culture simply cannot come to the flower if poetry is to be eschewed or neglected.
Having noted these points, we may go a step farther and take Shelley's definition. Poetry," he tells us, "is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happlest and best minds." Leaving out the question of happiness, there can be no doubt that the best thought and the best writing in the English language are to be found in the English poets. A great thinker and critic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, sets forth the technical side of matter very plainly and succinctly thus:—
Prose: Words in their best order. Poetry: The best words in the best order.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.