For instance--
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould
Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold.[53]
This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The crocus is not a
spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron.
How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads that
it is anything else than a plain crocus?
It is an important question. For, throughout our past reasonings about
art, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, or
ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is something
pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless _un_true. And what
is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full
of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being
so.
It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this fallacy
is of two principal kinds. Either, as in this case of the crocus, it
is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real expectation
that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused by an excited
state of the feelings, making us, for the time, more or less
irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy we shall have to speak
presently; but, in this chapter, I want to examine the nature of the
other error, that which the mind admits when affected strongly by
emotion.
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