In this there is nothing illogical. The poet is merely
appealing to a mood, familiar to all of us, in which we wonder whether
there may not be more things in heaven and earth than are crystallized
in our scientific formulas.
It is a grave defect of logic to state, or hint at, a problem, and then
illustrate it in such terms of character that it is solved in advance.
In _The Liars_, by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, there is an evident
suggestion of the problem whether a man is ever justified in rescuing a
woman, by means of the Divorce Court, from marital bondage which her
soul abhors. The sententious Sir Christopher Deering argues the matter
at great length: but all the time we are hungering for him to say the
one thing demanded by the logic of the situation: to wit: "Whatever the
abstract rights and wrongs of the case, this man would be an imbecile to
elope with this woman, who is an empty-headed, empty-hearted creature,
incapable either of the passion or of the loathing which alone could
lend any semblance of reason to a breach of social law.
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