contributions, one sometimes explaining, sometimes
superseding, the other: and the whole together not so much a
finished work as a body of suggestive hints. He does not
profess to have built the castle, but he pretends he has
traced the lines of the foundation. He has not made the
poetry, but he flatters himself he has done something towards
making the poets.

His notion of the poetic function is ambitious, and coincides
roughly with what Schopenhauer has laid down as the province
of the metaphysician. The poet is to gather together for
men, and set in order, the materials of their existence. He
is "The Answerer;" he is to find some way of speaking about
life that shall satisfy, if only for the moment, man's
enduring astonishment at his own position. And besides
having an answer ready, it is he who shall provoke the
question. He must shake people out of their indifference,
and force them to make some election in this world, instead
of sliding dully forward in a dream. Life is a business we
are all apt to mismanage; either living recklessly from day
to day, or suffering ourselves to be gulled out of our
moments by the inanities of custom. We should despise a man
who gave as little activity and forethought to the conduct of
any other business. But in this, which is the one thing of
all others, since it contains them all, we cannot see the
forest for the trees. One brief impression obliterates
another. There is something stupefying in the recurrence of
unimportant things. And it is only on rare provocations that
we can rise to take an outlook beyond daily concerns, and
comprehend the narrow limits and great possibilities of our