that an
age wanting in moral grandeur can with difficulty supply such, and an
age of spiritual discomfort with difficulty be powerfully and
delightfully affected by them.

A host of voices will indignantly rejoin that the present age is
inferior to the past neither in moral grandeur nor in spiritual
health. He who possesses the discipline I speak of will content
himself with remembering the judgements passed upon the present age,
in this respect, by the two men, the one of strongest head, the other
of widest culture, whom it has produced; by Goethe and by Niebuhr. It
will be sufficient for him that he knows the opinions held by these
two great men respecting the present age and its literature; and that
he feels assured in his own mind that their aims and demands upon life
were such as he would wish, at any rate, his own to be; and their
judgement as to what is impeding and disabling such as he may safely
follow. He will not, however, maintain a hostile attitude towards the
false pretensions of his age; he will content himself with not being
overwhelmed by them. He will esteem himself fortunate if he can
succeed in banishing from his mind all feelings of contradiction, and
irritation, and impatience; in order to delight himself with the
contemplation of some noble action of a heroic time, and to enable
others, through his representation of it, to delight in it also.

I am far indeed from making any claim, for myself, that I possess this
discipline; or for the following Poems, that they breathe its spirit.
But I say, that in the sincere endeavour to learn and practise, amid
the bewildering confusion of our times, what is sound and true in
poetical art, I seemed to myself to find the only sure guidance, the
only solid footing, among the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what
they wanted in Art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty which is
disheartening, and not hostile criticism. How often have I felt this
when reading words of disparagement or of cavil: that it is the
uncertainty as to what is really to be aimed at which makes our
difficulty, not the dissatisfaction of the critic, who himself suffers
from the same uncertainty. _Non me tua fervida terrent Dicta; Dii me
terrent, et Jupiter hostis._

Two kinds of _dilettanti_, says Goethe, there are in poetry: he who
neglects the indispensable mechanical part, and thinks he has done
enough if he shows spirituality and feeling; and he who seeks to
arrive at poetry mere