INTRODUCTION.

I.

HEINE, in that part of his Pictures of Travel which treats

of Italy, gives us a parable in a single paragraph of mingled eloquence and satire, which may aptly preface a collection of poems by living writers. When the sun comes forth, he says, the eagle flies up towards it and, as he draws near to it, sings his joy and his pain. "His fellow-creatures, especially men, believe that the eagle cannot sing, and know not that he only lifts his voice in music when far from the realm which they inhabit, and that in his pride he will be heard only by the sun. And he is right, for it might occur to some of the feathered mob down below there to criticise his song. I myself have heard such critics. The hen stands on one leg and clucks that the singer has no 'soul'; the turkey gobbler that he needs ' earnest feeling'; the dove coos that he cannot feel true love; the goose quacks that he is 'ignorant of science'; the capon chuckles that he is 'immoral'; the martin twitters that he is 'irreligious'; the sparrow pipes that 'he is not sufficiently prolific'; hoopoes, popinjays and screech-owls all cackling and gabbling and yelling;-only the nightingale joins not in the noise of these critics. Caring naught for her contemporaries, the red rose is her only thought and her only song."

It is, indeed, always easier to notice the shortcomings, than to perceive-if I may say so-the longcomings and the great qualities, in a contemporary poem. When we look back, the conditions are exactly reversed. The perspective of time, in

the world of literature, instead of diminishing important objects, as the perspective of line and space does in the physical world, appears to magnify them. Or is it perhaps that we cultivate what may be called an intellectual astigmatism, which causes us to exaggerate the lines of height, in things past, completed and viewed from a distance? We discern the great qualities, more readily than the faults, in works of a former time, because we have been taught to do so. But years of thought, a wise self-discipline and a reverent impartiality are needed, in order to detect the weak places in a recognized classic. Admiration for the excellent performances of earlier generations has been much insisted upon, and for a long time. What we require just now, for the recovery of our balance, is something that the world will doubtless need always; a better ability to discover and respond to the elements of greatness in the work of modern poets. We extend any amount of charity to the meritorious singers of the past, for their partial failures, when our eyes are opened to these failures at all. But the charity is quite thrown away. They do not need it now, being dead. On the other hand, living poets, who are human in their moods, as well as in the imperfections of their art, would be greatly benefited and encouraged, if we treated them to a share of the effusive generosity which we bestow on those whose tuneful lips are dust, and the echoes of their last chanting are mingled with the winds.

Dryden said, "If a poem have genius, it will force its own reception in the world. For there's a sweetness in good verse, which tickles even while it hurts, and no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him against his will." His reference was especially to a satirical poem by himself; but the generalization has been reasserted by many voices. It is a complacent idea, in keeping with the natural belief of a prospering author. Yet what competent person will deny that there is genius in the poems of Landor, or, of another kind and degree, in William Blake's unstudied Songs of Innocence and

Experience? And what sort of reception have these forced? Even the triumph, the crowning light, the glory that are Keats's, came too late for Keats. By what costly and tragic sacrifices is not this process of "forcing" recognition often attended! Surely it would be better for the world as well as for the singer; a much happier condition for the world; if it should learn to meet the poet's insight with an answering insight, quicker and more comprehensive than it generally displays.

A great deal has been said about the inspiration of the time and the influence of surroundings, in their effect on poetic production. A tendency has been growing, to prove philosophically that the best in art cannot be created under certain existing circumstances; and we even hear something about a Dichterdämmerung or "twilight of the poets," in America. Out of such a philosophy must come, in the end, not merely twilight but stagnation also, and death. The genesis of the greatest poetry involves, first of all, an unbounded although silent and devout confidence, in the mind of the artist, that he can rise to the loftiest heights of thought or feeling, on wings of the most musical expression. He must believe implicitly that he will one day reach those upper spaces, if left to his own manner of flight. If we are constantly telling him that the state of the atmosphere is such as absolutely to prevent any one's rising above a certain plane; or that careful research has disclosed a fatal weakness in the wing-power of the present generation; or that the measurements of his throat demonstrate that he never can give more than a small volume of sound;-if we are always doing this, we shall be doing what we can to destroy that native faculty of self-reliance and joyous inspiration, which makes him a poet. The mysterious levitation that enables him to rise above the general run of men, depends precisely upon this power. There is something morbid in the self-scrutiny, the instropection, the faint-hearted. questioning, with which critics of our day persuade the poet

to enfeeble his gift of levitation. Moreover, no system of reasoning upon the conditions needed for supremely good poetizing has ever made it possible to predict the rise of a commanding genius, or to prevent the advent of one amid circumstances which, at the moment, must have appeared as discouraging as any that can be imagined. Such a system may, however, as I have tried to show, bring to bear a spirit adverse to the creative mood, and so lessen the chance for survivals of the fittest, in literature.

The circumstances nearly always appear discouraging to those who have to face them. Every age or period must have presented drawbacks enough, considered from the point of view of those who lived in it. Of this truth the individual history of genius, with few exceptions, furnishes terribly vivid evidence. One after another, the poets have been hampered, thwarted, opposed, by poverty or hard and prosaic employments; or by popular indifference, ridicule, ill-will. They have been made

to feel that they came too late, or else that they came too early. They have been involved in all sorts of trouble, which would seem, in theory, ruinous to every artistic striving. Even where the harsher and more sordid necessities have been provided for, there remain the inflictions of malice and the uncertain, varying nature of their relations with the public. Wordsworth's waiting for intelligent and popular approval is the most striking instance of one sort of chilling trial to which the poet is subjected; and some of the favorites of our day have had to pass through long terms of probation, during which they have won scanty foretaste, or none, of the honors that awaited them. Tennyson, unnoticed on the publication of his first book, retreated into a ten years' silence; Longfellow, although easy of appreciation by the masses and, in his usual experience, an exception to the usual hard lot of the song-maker, grew somewhat slowly into his full renown. His most original, his distinctively American work, the Hiawatha, was for a long time laughed at and parodied with