cumbrous, or heavy, or pedantic historian will never be read, even if
his learning be praised by all the critics of Germany.

Poets are the great artists of language. They even create languages,
like Homer and Shakspeare. They are the ornaments of literature. But
they are more than ornaments. They are the sages whose sayings are
treasured up and valued and quoted from age to age, because of the
inspiration which is given to them,--an insight into the mysteries of
the soul and the secrets of life. A good song is never lost; a good poem
is never buried, like a system of philosophy, but has an inherent
vitality, like the melodies of the son of Jesse. Real poetry is
something, too, beyond elaborate versification, which is one of the
literary fashions, and passes away like other fashions unless redeemed
by something that arouses the soul, and elevates it, and appeals to the
consciousness of universal humanity. It is the poets who make
revelations, like prophets and sages of old; it is they who invest
history with interest, like Shakspeare and Racine, and preserve what is
most vital and valuable in it. They even adorn philosophy, like
Lucretius, when he speculated on the systems of the Ionian philosophers.
They certainly impress powerfully on the mind the truths of theology, as
Watts and Cowper and Wesley did in their noble lyrics. So that the most
rapt and imaginative of men, if artists, utilize the whole realm of
knowledge, and diffuse it, and perpetuate it in artistic forms. But real
poets are rare, even if there are many who glory in the jingle of
language and the structure of rhyme. Poetry, to live, must have a soul,
and it must combine rare things,--art, music, genius, original thought,
wisdom made still richer by learning, and, above all, a power of
appealing to inner sentiments, which all feel, yet are reluctant to
express. So choice are the gifts, so grand are the qualities, so varied
the attainments of truly great poets, that very few are born in a whole