love affairs were invaluable, no doubt, since a poet is not be expected
to treat adequately a passion which he has not experienced himself. It
is true that one hears from time to time, notably in the 1890's, that
the artist should remain apart from, and coldly critical of the emotions
he portrays. But this is not the typical attitude of our period. When
one speaks thus, he is usually thought to be confusing the poet with the
literary man, who writes from calculation rather than from inspiration.
The dictum of Aristotle, "Those who feel emotion are most convincing
through a natural sympathy with the characters they represent,"
[Footnote: _Poetics_ XVII, Butcher's translation.] has appeared
self-evident to most critics of our time.

But the real question of inspiration by love goes deeper and is
connected with Aristotle's further suggestion that poetry involves "a
strain of madness," a statement which we are wont to interpret as
meaning that the poet is led by his passions rather than by his reason.
This constitutes the gist of the whole dispute between the romanticist
and the classicist, and our poets are such ardent devotees of love as
their muse, simply because, in spite of other short-lived fads, the
temper of the last century has remained predominantly romantic. It is
obvious that the idea of love as a distraction and a curse is the
offspring of classicism. If poetry is the work of the reason, then
equilibrium of soul, which is so sorely upset by passionate love, is
doubtless very necessary. But the romanticist represents the poet, not
as one drawing upon the resources within his mind, but as the vessel
filled from without. His afflatus comes upon him and departs, without
his control or understanding. Poetical inspiration, to such a
temperament, naturally assumes the shape of passion. Bryant's expression
of this point of view is so typical of the general attitude as to seem
merely commonplace. He tells us, in _The Poet_,