[46] Huysmans, who throughout
his books reveals a very intense preoccupation with the exact shades of
many kinds of sensory impressions, and an apparently abnormally keen
sensibility to them, has shown a great interest in odors, more especially
in an oft-quoted passage in _A Rebours_. The blind Milton of "Paradise
Lost" (as the late Mr. Grant Allen once remarked to me), dwells much on
scents; in this case it is doubtless to the blindness and not to any
special organic predisposition that we must attribute this direction of
sensory attention.[47] Among our older English poets, also, Herrick
displays a special interest in odors with a definite realization of their
sexual attractiveness.[48] Shelley, who was alive to so many of the
unusual aesthetic aspects of things, often shows an enthusiastic delight in
odors, more especially those of flowers. It may, indeed, be said that most
poets--though to a less degree than those I have mentioned--devote a
special attention to odors, and, since it has been possible to describe
smell as the sense of imagination, this need not surprise us. That
Shakespeare, for instance, ranked this sense very high indeed is shown by
various passages in his works and notably by Sonnet LIV: "O, how much more
doth beauty beauteous seem?"--in which he implicitly places the attraction
of odor on at least as high a level as that of vision.
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