Our language does not possess any single word wherewith to sum up the
various categories of things (made by nature or made by man, intended
solely for the purpose of subserving by mere coincidence) which
minister to our organic and many-sided æsthetic instincts: the things
affecting us in that absolutely special, unmistakable, and hitherto
mysterious manner expressed in our finding them _beautiful_. It is of
the part which such things--whether actually present or merely
shadowed in our mind--can play in our life; and of the influence of
the instinct for beauty on the other instincts making up our nature,
that I would treat in these pages. And for this reason I have been
glad to accept from the hands of chance, and of that road-mender of
the tram-way, the bay laurel as a symbol of what we have no word to
express: the aggregate of all art, all poetry, and particularly of all
poetic and artistic vision and emotion.
For the Bay Laurel--_Laurus Nobilis_ of botanists--happens to be not
merely the evergreen, unfading plant into which Apollo metamorphosed,
while pursuing, the maiden whom he loved, even as the poet, the artist
turns into immortal shapes his own quite personal and transient moods,
or as the fairest realities, nobly sought, are transformed, made
evergreen and restoratively fragrant for all time in our memory and
fancy. It is a plant of noblest utility, averting, as the ancients
thought, lightning from the dwellings it surrounded, even as
disinterested love for beauty averts from our minds the dangers which
fall on the vain and the covetous; and curing many aches and fevers,
even as the contemplation of beauty refreshes and invigorates our
spirit. Indeed, we seem to be reading a description no longer of the
virtues of the bay laurel, but of the _virtues_ of all beautiful
sights and sounds, of all beautiful thoughts and emotions, in reading
the following quaint and charming words of an old herbal:--
"The bay leaves are of as necessary use as any other in garden or
orchard, for they serve both for pleasure and profit, both for
ornament and use, both for honest civil uses and for physic; yea,
both for the sick and for the sound, both for the living and for
the dead. The bay serveth to adorn the house of God as well as of
man, to procure warmth, comfort, and strength to the limbs of men
and women;... to season vessels wherein are preserved our meats as
well as our drinks; to crown or encircle as a garland the heads of
the living, and to stick and deck forth the bodies of the dead; so
that, from the cradle to the grave we have still use of it, we
have still need of it."