"
In so far as one may see turning points in a tangle of yarn, or
count dewdrops on a morning cobweb, I may say that a few evenings
with my friend J---- were the decisive vibration that moved one more
minor poet toward the privilege and penalty of Parnassus. One cannot
nicely decipher such fragile causes and effects. It was a year later
before the matter became serious enough to enforce abandoning
library copies of Keats and buying an edition of my own. And this,
too, may have been not unconnected with the gracious influence of
the other sex as exhibited in a neighbouring athenaeum; and was
accompanied by a gruesome spate of florid lyrics: some (happily)
secret, and some exposed with needless hardihood in a college
magazine. The world, which has looked leniently upon many poetical
minorities, regards such frenzies with tolerant charity and
forgetfulness. But the wretch concerned may be pardoned for looking
back in a mood of lingering enlargement. As Sir Philip Sidney put
it, "Self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous
wherein ourselves be parties."
* * * * *
There is a vast deal of nonsense written and uttered about poetry.
In an age when verses are more noisily and fluently circulated than
ever before, it might seem absurd to plead in the Muse's defence.
Yet poetry and the things poets love are pitifully weak to-day.
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