response. It were rash to say that the poets need no audience; the
loneliest have promised themselves a tardy recognition, and some
among the greatest came to their maturity in the warm atmosphere of
a congenial society. Indeed the ratification set upon merit by a
living audience, fit though few, is necessary for the development
of the most humane and sympathetic genius; and the memorable ages
of literature, in Greece or Rome, in France or England, have been
the ages of a literary society. The nursery of our greatest
dramatists must be looked for, not, it is true, in the transfigured
bear-gardens of the Bankside, but in those enchanted taverns,
islanded and bastioned by the protective decree -


Idiota, insulsus, tristis, turpis, abesto.


The poet seems to be soliloquising because he is addressing
himself, with the most entire confidence, to a small company of his
friends, who may even, in unhappy seasons, prove to be the
creatures of his imagination. Real or imaginary, they are taken by
him for his equals; he expects from them a quick intelligence and a
perfect sympathy, which may enable him to despise all concealment.
He never preaches to them, nor scolds, nor enforces the obvious.
Content that what he has spoken he has spoken, he places a
magnificent trust on a single expression. He neither explains, nor
falters, nor repents; he introduces his work with no preface, and
cumbers it with no notes. He will not lower nor raise his voice
for the sake of the profane and idle who may chance to stumble
across his entertainment. His living auditors, unsolicited for the
tribute of worship or an alms, find themselves conceived of in the