the thought of a popular poem: we feel, with artistic pleasure, the
broad, overpowering liberation of a popular gift, and we delight in this
natural phenomenon as we do in an uncontrollable cataract. But as soon
as we examine this thought at close quarters, we involuntarily put a
poetic _mass of people_ in the place of the poetising _soul of the
people_: a long row of popular poets in whom individuality has no
meaning, and in whom the tumultuous movement of a people's soul, the
intuitive strength of a people's eye, and the unabated profusion of a
people's fantasy, were once powerful: a row of original geniuses,
attached to a time, to a poetic genus, to a subject-matter.

Such a conception justly made people suspicious. Could it be possible
that that same Nature who so sparingly distributed her rarest and most
precious production--genius--should suddenly take the notion of
lavishing her gifts in one sole direction? And here the thorny question
again made its appearance: Could we not get along with one genius only,
and explain the present existence of that unattainable excellence? And
now eyes were keenly on the lookout for whatever that excellence and
singularity might consist of. Impossible for it to be in the
construction of the complete works, said one party, for this is far from
faultless; but doubtless to be found in single songs: in the single
pieces above all; not in the whole. A second party, on the other hand,
sheltered themselves beneath the authority of Aristotle, who especially
admired Homer's "divine" nature in the choice of his entire subject, and
the manner in which he planned and carried it out. If, however, this
construction was not clearly seen, this fault was due to the way the
poems were handed down to posterity and not to the poet himself--it was
the result of retouchings and interpolations, owing to which the
original setting of the work gradually became obscured. The more the
first school looked for inequalities, contradictions, perplexities, the