I.

This _rifacimento_ of Arion's story is not mere mythological twaddle. As allegories abound, and as in fact there is a suspicion that the whole Romance may be only an allegory, an "Apotheosis of Poetry,"--the reader must keep open his internal eye.

Arion is the Spirit of Poetry as embodied in any age, whether in a single voice, or many. This the age always attempts to drown,--seldom with applause. The sailors are the exponents of an age, or its critics. In the case of Arion, they belonged to a certain tribe of Philistines,--not yet extinct.[5] There is a deep significance in the fact, that they resolutely stopped their ears against the Poet's song. The treasures of the Poet are his ideas of the good and the beautiful, which he fetches from his far home; for he comes, "not in entire forgetfulness." The fact, that Arion preferred jumping overboard to being converted into a heave-offering, is typical of the self-extinguishment and natural dissolution of the true soul, born into a humanity which is not its counterpart, which cannot answer to it. Those providential dolphins are a grateful posterity, which preserve not only the Poet's treasures, but his memory. The conflict among the sailors, too, has a deep meaning, hidden also in that old, wonderful myth of the Kilkenny cats.

But an allegory has many sides, like a genuine symphony. Each reader will interpret all of them best from his own point of view. Should Henry himself turn out to be Arion, the feat would only be one of inverted transmigration, and not more extraordinary than the regular method.