But this Muse appears not to him, as to the Greeks, after the fashion of a woman, nor even more prosaically after the likeness of a man.

Unnatural though it seem to us, his inspiration seeks no human symbol.

His Muse is not kin to mankind.

She is too impersonal for any personification, for she is Nature.
That poet whose name carries with it a certain presumption of infallibility has told us that "the proper study of mankind is man;" and if material advancement in consequence be any criterion of the fitness of a particular mental pursuit, events have assuredly justified the saying.

Indeed, the Levant has helped antithetically to preach the same lesson, in showing us by its own fatal example that the improper study of mankind is woman, and that they who but follow the fair will inevitably degenerate.
The Far Oriental knows nothing of either study, and cares less.