mportant as the admission or exclusion of
the Poem in question? I have done so, because I was anxious to avow
that the sole reason for its exclusion was that which has been stated
above; and that it has not been excluded in deference to the opinion
which many critics of the present day appear to entertain against
subjects chosen from distant times and countries: against the choice,
in short, of any subjects but modern ones.

'The Poet,' it is said, and by an intelligent critic, 'the Poet who
would really fix the public attention must leave the exhausted past,
and draw his subjects from matters of present import, and _therefore_
both of interest and novelty.'

Now this view I believe to be completely false. It is worth examining,
inasmuch as it is a fair sample of a class of critical dicta
everywhere current at the present day, having a philosophical form and
air, but no real basis in fact; and which are calculated to vitiate
the judgement of readers of poetry, while they exert, so far as they
are adopted, a misleading influence on the practice of those who write
it.

What are the eternal objects of Poetry, among all nations and at all
times? They are actions; human actions; possessing an inherent
interest in themselves, and which are to be communicated in an
interesting manner by the art of the Poet. Vainly will the latter
imagine that he has everything in his own power; that he can make an
intrinsically inferior action equally delightful with a more excellent
one by his treatment of it: he may indeed compel us to admire his
skill, but his work will possess, within itself, an incurable defect.

The Poet, then, has in the first place to select an excellent action;
and what actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most
powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those
elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which
are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same;
that which interests them is permanent and the same also. The
modernness or antiquity of an action, therefore, has nothing to do
with its fitness for poetical representation; this depends upon its
inherent qualities. To the elementary part of our nature, to our
passions, that which is great and passionate is eternally interesting;
and interesting solely in proportion to its greatness and to its
passion. A great human action of a thousand years ago is more
interesting to it than a smaller