[38] “Messrs. Mallet and Pictet, being on the lake, in front of the Castle of Chillon, on August 6, 1774, sunk a thermometer to the depth of 312 feet.” ... —­SAUSSURE, Voyages dans les Alpes, chap. ii, Sec. 33.  It appears from the next paragraph, that the thermometer was at the bottom of the lake. [Ruskin, altered.]

  [39] Ruskin later wrote:  “It leaves out rhythm, which I now consider
  a defect in said definition; otherwise good.”

  [40] Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the Affliction of
  Margaret: 

    I look for ghosts, but none will force
      Their way to me.  ’T is falsely said
    That ever there was intercourse
      Between the living and the dead;
    For, surely, then, I should have sight
    Of him I wait for, day and night. 
    With love and longing infinite.

This we call Poetry, because it is invented or made by the writer, entering into the mind of a supposed person.  Next, take an instance of the actual feeling truly experienced and simply expressed by a real person.

“Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argentiere, whose cottage I went into to ask for milk, as I came down from the glacier of Argentiere, in the month of March, 1764.  An epidemic dysentery had prevailed in the village, and, a few months before, had taken away from her, her father, her husband, and her brothers, so that she was left alone, with three children in the cradle.  Her face had something noble in it, and its expression bore the seal of a calm and profound sorrow.  After having given me milk, she asked me whence I came, and what I came there to do, so early in the year.  When she knew that I was of Geneva, she said to me, ’she could not believe that all Protestants were lost souls; that there were many honest people among us, and that God was too good and too great to condemn all without distinction.’  Then, after a moment of reflection, she added, in shaking her head, ’But that which is very strange is that of so many who have gone away, none have ever returned.  I,’ she added, with an expression of grief, ’who have so mourned my husband and my brothers, who have never ceased to think of them, who every night conjure them with beseechings to tell me where they are, and in what state they are!  Ah, surely, if they lived anywhere, they would not leave me thus!  But, perhaps,’ she added, ’I am not worthy of this kindness, perhaps the pure and innocent spirits of these children,’ and she looked at the cradle, ’may have their presence, and the joy which is denied to me.’”—­SAUSSURE, Voyages dans les Alpes, chap. xxiv.

  This we do not call Poetry, merely because it is not invented, but
  the true utterance of a real person. [Ruskin.]

  [41] The closing lines of Wordsworth’s Childless Father.

  [42] Iliad, 1. 463 ff., 2. 425 ff.; Odyssey, 3. 455 ff., etc.