contented with a civil and conformed manner of living,
and to write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance
from their own experience. But the highest minds of the
world have never ceased to explore the double meaning,
or shall I say the quadruple or the centuple or much more
manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact; Orpheus,
Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg,
and the masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry. For we
are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire
and torch-bearers, but children of the fire, made of it,
and only the same divinity transmuted and at two or three
removes, when we know least about it. And this hidden
truth, that the fountains whence all this river of Time
and its creatures floweth are intrinsically ideal and
beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature
and functions of the Poet, or the man of Beauty; to the
means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect
of the art in the present time.

The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet
is representative. He stands among partial men for
the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth,
but of the common wealth. The young man reveres men
of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more
himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he
also receives, but they more. Nature enhances her
beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief
that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time.
He is isolated among his contemporaries by truth and
by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits,