As for the old seers
Whose eyes God touched with vision of the life
Of the unfolding ages, I must doubt
Whether they comprehended what they saw.]

Such a view has been a boon to literary critics. Shakespeare
commentators, in particular, have been duly grateful for the lee-way
granted them, when they are relieved from the necessity of limiting
Shakespeare's meanings to the confines of his knowledge. As for the
poet's own sense of his incomprehension, Francis Thompson's words are
typical. Addressing a little child, he wonders at the statements she
makes, ignorant of their significance; then he reflects,

And ah, we poets, I misdoubt
Are little more than thou.
We speak a lesson taught, we know not how,
And what it is that from us flows
The hearer better than the utterer knows.
[Footnote: _Sister Songs._]

One might think that the poet would take pains to differentiate this
inspired madness from the diseased mind of the ordinary lunatic. But as
a matter of fact, bards who were literally insane have attracted much
attention from their brothers. [Footnote: At the beginning of the
romantic period not only Blake and Cowper, but Christopher Smart, John
Clare, Thomas Dermody, John Tannahill and Thomas Lovell Beddoes made the
mad poet familiar.] Of these, Tasso [Footnote: See _Song for Tasso_,
Shelley; _Tasso to Leonora_, James Thomson, B. V., _Tasso to Leonora_,
E. F. Hoffman.] and Cowper [Footnote: See Bowles, _The Harp and Despair
of Cowper_; Mrs. Browning, _Cowper's Grave_; Lord Houghton, _On Cowper's