We are told by Lockhart,
that the old man who told the story of Gilpin Horner to Lady Dalkeith
_bona fide_ believed the existence of the elf. Lady Dalkeith repeated
the tale to Walter Scott, who worked it up with consummate skill into
the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. This is a case of a really believed
legend of diablerie becoming the source of a literary fiction. Scott
neither believed in the reality of the goblin page himself, nor
expected his readers to believe it. He could not rise beyond the
poetry of amusement, and no poetry with only this motive can ever be
more than literary art.
Other than this was Milton's conception of his own function. Of the
fashionable verse, such as was written in the Caroline age, or in
any age, he disapproved, not only because it was imperfect art, but
because it was untrue utterance. Poems that were raised "from the heat
of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from
the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming
parasite," were in his eyes treachery to the poet's high vocation.
* * * * *
Poetical powers "are the inspired gift of God rarely bestowed .
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