language in general. Well,--the mythical conception, projected at
last, in drama or sculpture, is the name, the instrument of the
identification, of the given matter,--of its unity in variety, its
outline or definition in mystery; its spiritual form, to use again
the expression I have borrowed from William Blake--form, with hands,
and lips, and opened eyelids--spiritual, as conveying to us, in that,
the soul of rain, or of a Greek river, or of swiftness, or purity.

To illustrate this, think what the effect would be, if you could
associate, by some trick of memory, a certain group of natural
objects, in all their varied perspective, their changes of colour and
tone in varying light and shade, with the being and image of an
actual person. You travelled through a country of clear rivers and
wide meadows, or of high windy places, or of lowly grass and willows,
or of the Lady of the Lake; and all the complex impressions of these
objects wound themselves, as a second animated body, new and more
subtle, around the person of some one left there, so that they no
longer come to recollection apart from each other. Now try to
conceive the image of an actual person, in whom, somehow, all those
impressions of the vine and its fruit, as the highest type of the
life of the green sap, had become incorporate;--all the scents and
colours of its flower and fruit, and [38] something of its curling
foliage; the chances of its growth; the enthusiasm, the easy flow of
more choice expression, as its juices mount within one; for the image
is eloquent, too, in word, gesture, and glancing of the eyes, which
seem to be informed by some soul of the vine within it: as Wordsworth
says,

Beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face--