[Footnote: _By Blue Ontario's Shore._]
As for the third method employed by the public in its attacks upon the
poet,--that of making charges against his truthfulness,--the poet
resents this most bitterly of all. Gray, in _The Bard,_ lays the
wholesale slaughter of Scotch poets by Edward I, to their fearless truth
telling. A number of later poets have written pathetic tales showing the
tragic results of the unimaginative public's denial of the poet's
delicate perceptions of truth. [Footnote: See Jean Ingelow, _Gladys
and her Island;_ Helen Hunt Jackson, _The Singer's Hills;_ J. G.
Holland, _Jacob Hurd's Child._]
To the poet's excited imagination, it seems as if all the world regarded
his race as a constantly increasing swarm of flies, and had started in
on a systematic course of extirpation. [Footnote: See G. K. Chesterton,
_More Poets Yet._] As for the professional critic, he becomes an
ogre, conceived of as eating a poet for breakfast every morning. The new
singer is invariably warned by his brothers that he must struggle for
his honor and his very life against his malicious audience.
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70