cultivated habit in them to scrutinize the tool-marks and be blind to
the building, to hearken for the key-creaks and be deaf to the
diapason, to judge the landscape by a nocturnal exploration with a
flash-lantern. In other words, to carry on the old game of sampling
the poem or drama by quoting the worst line or worst passage only, in
ignorance or not of Coleridge's proof that a versification of any
length neither can be nor ought to be all poetry; of reading meanings
into a book that its author never dreamt of writing there. I might
go on interminably.

But I do not now think any such temporary obstructions to be the
cause of the hazard, for these negligences and ignorances, though
they may have stifled a few true poets in the run of generations,
disperse like stricken leaves before the wind of next week, and are
no more heard of again in the region of letters than their writers
themselves. No: we may be convinced that something of the deeper
sort mentioned must be the cause.

In any event poetry, pure literature in general, religion--I include
religion because poetry and religion touch each other, or rather
modulate into each other; are, indeed, often but different names for
the same thing--these, I say, the visible signs of mental and
emotional life, must like all other things keep moving, becoming;
even though at present, when belief in witches of Endor is displacing
the Darwinian theory and "the truth that shall make you free, men's
minds appear, as above noted, to be moving backwards rather than on.
I speak, of course, somewhat sweepingly, and should except many
isolated minds; also the minds of men in certain worthy but small
bodies of various denominations, and perhaps in the homely quarter
where advance might have been the very least expected a few years