mp, and Aulaff's visit to
the Saxon, are sufficient to show in what respect the poets of that
period were held; when a man without any safe conduct whatever
could enter the enemy's camp on the very eve of battle, as was
here the case; could enter unopposed, unquestioned, and return
unmolested!--What could have conferred upon the poet of that day so
singular a privilege? What upon the poet of an earlier time that
sanctity in behoof whereof

"The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground: and the repeated air
Of sad Electra's poet had the power
To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare."

What but an universal recognition of the poet as an universal
benefactor of mankind? And did mankind recognize him as such, from
some unaccountable infatuation, or because his labours obtained for
him an indefeasible right to that estimate? How came it, when a Greek
sculptor had completed some operose performance, that his countrymen
bore him in triumph thro' their city, and rejoiced in his prosperity
as identical with their own? How but because his art had embodied
some principle of beauty whose mysterious influence it was their
pride to appreciate--or he had enduringly moulded the limbs of some
well-trained Athlete, such as it was their interest to develop, or he
had recorded the overthrow of some barbaric invader whom their
fathers had fallen to repel.

In the middle ages when a knight listened, in the morning, to some
song of brave doing, ere evening he himself might be the hero of such
song.--What wonder then that he held sacred the function of the poet!
Now-a-days our heroes (and we have them) are left unchapleted and
neglected--and therefore the poet lives and dies neglected.

Thus it would appear from these facts (which have been collaterally
evolved in course of enquiring into the propriety of choosing the
subject from past or present time, and in course of the consequent
analysis) that Art, to become a more powerful engine of civilization,
assuming a practically humanizing tendency (the admitted function of
Art), should be made more directly conversant with the things,
incidents, and influences which surround and constitute the living
world of those whom Art proposes to improve, and, whether it should
appear in event that Art can or can not assume this attitude without
jeopardizing her specific existence, that such a consummation were
desirable must be eq