higher we stand in the physical and intellectual scale the more inevitable becomes our suffering: and that when men shall have thrown aside the last illusion of their youth, namely, the hope of any obtainable good either in this world or in another, they will then no longer consent to bear the burden of life, but, by the supreme force of their united volition, will overcome the resistance of nature, and achieve the destruction of the universe. But under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.
To return to the poets, however, it is edifying to hear Mr. Leslie Stephen assert that "nothing is less poetical than optimism," or to listen to Mr. John Addington Symonds, who, scanning the thoughtful soul for a solution of man's place in the order of creation, can find for him no more joyous task than, Prometheus-like,
"To dree life's doom on Caucasus."
Even when a poem appears to the uninitiated to be of a cheerful, not to say blithesome cast,
