lture in
Europe, even as it preceded philosophy and art in Greece. The gay
Provencal singers were harbingers of Dante, even as unknown poets
prepared the way for Homer. And as Homer was the creator of Grecian
literature, so Dante, by his immortal comedy, gave the first great
impulse to Italian thought. Hence poets are great benefactors, and we
will not let them die in our memories or hearts. We crown them, when
alive, with laurels and praises; and when they die, we erect monuments
to their honor. They are dear to us, since their writings give
perpetual pleasure, and appeal to our loftiest sentiments. They appeal
not merely to consecrated ideas and feelings, but they strive to conform
to the principles of immortal art. Every great poet is as much an artist
as the sculptor or the painter; and art survives learning itself. Varro,
the most learned of the Romans, is forgotten, when Virgil is familiar to
every school-boy. Cicero himself would not have been immortal, if his
essays and orations had not conformed to the principles of art. Even an
historian who would live must be an artist, like Voltaire or Macaulay. A
cumbrous, or heavy, or pedantic historian will never be read, even if
his learning be praised by all the critics of Germany.

Poets are the great artists of language. They even create languages,
like Homer and Shakspeare. They are the ornaments of literature. But
they are more than ornaments. They are the sages whose sayings are
treasured up and valued and quoted from age to age, because of the
inspiration which is given to them,--an insight into the mysteries of
the soul and the secrets of life. A good song is never lost; a good poem
is never buried, like a system of philosophy, but has an inherent
vitality, like the melodies of the son of Jesse. Real poetry is
something, too, beyond elaborate versification, which is one of the
literary fashions, and passes away like other fashions unless redeemed
by something that arouses the soul, and elevates it, and appeals to the
consciousness of universal humanity. It is the poets who make
revelations, like prophets and sages of old; it is they who invest
history with interest, like Shakspeare and Racine, and preserve what is
most vital and valuable in it. They even adorn philosophy, like
Lucretius, when he speculated on the systems of the Ionian philosophers.
They certainly impress powerfully on the mind the truths of theology, as
Watts and Cowper and Wesley did in their no