There is now something like finality of
knowledge at least; and therefore not a little error in the past is
ready to be repaired. This is the result of time. Of the slow
actions and reactions of critical taste there might be something to
say, but nothing important. No loyal anthologist perhaps will
consent to acknowledge these tides; he will hardly do his work well
unless he believe it to be stable and perfect; nor, by the way,
will he judge worthily in the name of others unless he be resolved
to judge intrepidly for himself.
Inasmuch as even the best of all poems are the best upon
innumerable degrees, the size of most anthologies has gone far to
decide what degrees are to be gathered in and what left without.
The best might make a very small volume, and be indeed the best, or
a very large volume, and be still indeed the best. But my labour
has been to do somewhat differently--to gather nothing that did not
overpass a certain boundary-line of genius. Gray's Elegy, for
instance, would rightly be placed at the head of everything below
that mark. It is, in fact, so near to the work of genius as to be
most directly, closely, and immediately rebuked by genius; it meets
genius at close quarters and almost deserves that Shakespeare
himself should defeat it. Mediocrity said its own true word in the
Elegy:
"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
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