FOOTNOTES:

[31] I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders I mean the Creative (Shakespeare, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But both of these must be first-rate in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in quality no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There is quite enough of the best,—much more than we can ever read or enjoy in the length of a life; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber us with inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by young pseudo-poets, ‘that they believe there is some good in what they have written: that they hope to do better in time,’ &c. Some good! If there is not all good, there is no good. If they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble us now? Let them rather courageously burn all they have done, and wait for the better days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense know better than so to waste their time; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the master’s hand on the chords too well to fumble among them after him. Nay, more than this; all inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner. There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world.

[32] ‘Well said, old mole! can’st work i’ the ground so fast?’

[33] It is worth while comparing the way a similar question is put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats:—

He wept, and his bright tears
Went trickling down the golden bow he held.
Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood;
While from beneath some cumb’rous boughs hard by,
With solemn step, an awful goddess came.
And there was purport in her looks for him,
Which he with eager guess began to read:
Perplexed the while, melodiously he said,
‘How cam’st thou over the unfooted sea?’

[34] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come upon, in Maud:

For a great speculation had fail’d;
And ever he mutter’d and madden’d, and ever wann’d with despair;
And out he walk’d, when the wind like a broken worldling wail’d,
And the flying gold of the ruin’d woodlands drove, thro’ the air.

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near!’
And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late.’
The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear!’
And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’