ly by mechanism, in which he can acquire an
artisan's readiness, and is without soul and matter. And he adds, that
the first does most harm to Art, and the last to himself. If we must
be _dilettanti_: if it is impossible for us, under the circumstances
amidst which we live, to think clearly, to feel nobly, and to
delineate firmly: if we cannot attain to the mastery of the great
artists--let us, at least, have so much respect for our Art as to
prefer it to ourselves: let us not bewilder our successors: let us
transmit to them the practice of Poetry, with its boundaries and
wholesome regulative laws, under which excellent works may again,
perhaps, at some future time, be produced, not yet fallen into
oblivion through our neglect, not yet condemned and cancelled by the
influence of their eternal enemy, Caprice.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION

(1854)

I have allowed the Preface to the former edition of these Poems to
stand almost without change, because I still believe it to be, in the
main, true. I must not, however, be supposed insensible to the force
of much that has been alleged against portions of it, or unaware that
it contains many things incompletely stated, many things which need
limitation. It leaves, too, untouched the question, how far, and in
what manner, the opinions there expressed respecting the choice of
subjects apply to lyric poetry; that region of the poetical field
which is chiefly cultivated at present. But neither have I time now to
supply these deficiencies, nor is this the proper place for attempting
it: on one or two points alone I wish to offer, in the briefest
possible way, some explanation.

An objection has been ably urged to the classing together, as subjects
equally belonging to a past time, Oedipus and Macbeth. And it is no
doubt true that to Shakespeare, standing on the verge of the Middle
Ages, the epoch of Macbeth was more familiar than that of Oedipus. But
I was speaking of actions as they presented themselves to us moderns:
and it will hardly be said that the European mind, since Voltaire, has
much more affinity with the times of Macbeth than with those of
Oedipus. As moderns, it seems to me, we have no longer any direct
affinity with the circumstances and feelings of either; as
individuals, we are attracted towards this or that personage, we have
a capacity for imagining him, irrespective of his times, solely
according to a law of personal sympathy; and those subjects for