history cannot have. The historian, bound by fact and accuracy, must
often let his hero come to grief. The poet (or, in this case we may
call him, in the Greek sense, the "maker" of stories) strives to show
_ideal_ justice.

What encouragement to virtue, except for the abnormal child, can be
offered by the stories of good men coming to grief, such as we find
Miltiades, Phocion, Socrates, Severus, Cicero, Cato and Caesar?

Sir Philip Sydney says in his "Defence of Poesy":

"Only the poet declining to be held by the limitations of the lawyer,
the _historian_, the grammarian, the rhetorician, the logician,
the physician, the metaphysician is lifted up with the vigor of his
own imagination; doth grow in effect into another nature in making
things either better than Nature bringeth forth or quite anew, as the
Heroes, Demi-gods, Cyclops, Furies and such like so as he goeth hand-
in-hand with Nature, not inclosed in the narrow range of her gifts but
freely ranging within the Zodiac of his own art--_her_ world is brazen;
the poet only delivers a golden one."

The effect of the story need not stop at the negative task of correcting
evil tendencies. There is the positive effect of translating the
abstract ideal of the story into concrete action.

I was told by Lady Henry Somerset that when the first set of children
came down from London for a fortnight's holiday in the country, she
was much startled and shocked by the obscenity of the games they
played amongst themselves. Being a sound psychologist, Lady Henry
wisely refrained from appearing surprised or from attempting any