History relating outward events alone was an unmeaning gossip, with the
world for a village. This life could only become other than
phantasmagoric, could only become real, as it stood related to something
that was higher and permanent. Hence the idea of Fate, of a higher power
unseen--that shadow, as of an eagle circling to its swoop, which flits
stealthily and swiftly across the windy plains of Troy. In the "Odyssey"
we find pure allegory.
Now, under all these names--praiser, seer, soothsayer--we find the same
idea lurking. The poet is he who can best see and best say what is
ideal--what belongs to the world of soul and of beauty. Whether he
celebrate the brave and good man, or the gods, or the beautiful as it
appears in man or nature, something of a religious character still
clings to him; he is the revealer of Deity. He may be unconscious of his
mission; he may be false to it; but in proportion as he is a great poet,
he rises to the level of it the more often. He does not always directly
rebuke what is bad and base, but indirectly by making us feel what
delight there is in the good and fair. If he besiege evil, it is with
such beautiful engines of war (as Plutarch tells us of Demetrius) that
the besieged themselves are charmed with them. Whoever reads the great
poets cannot but be made better by it, for they always introduce him to
a higher society, to a greater style of manners and of thinking.
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