e five great poets of the first order of
genius. Yet the publication of his volume of verse received from
"Blackwood" and the "Quarterly" only contempt and bitter scorn. Waxing
bold, the penny-a-liners grew savage, until the very skies rained lies
and bitter slanders upon poor Keats. Sensitive, soon he was wounded to
death. After a week of sleeplessness, he arose one morning to find a
bright red spot upon his handkerchief. "That is arterial blood," said
he; "that drop is my death-warrant; I shall die." And so, when he was
one-and-twenty, friends lifted above the boy's dust a marble slab, upon
which was written: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Now
his name shines like a star, while low down and bespattered with mud
are the names of those whose cruel criticisms helped to kill the boy
and whose only claim to immortality is their brutality.

Witness also the contempt our age once visited upon Browning, whose
mind is slowly becoming recognized as one of the rich-gold minds of our
century. Witness the sport over Ruskin's "Munera Pulveris," and the
scornful reception given Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." Now that a few
years have passed, those who once reviled are teaching their children
the pathway to the graves of the great. The harshness of the world's
treatment of its greatest teachers makes one of the most pathetic
chapters in history. God gives each nation only a few men of supreme
talent. Gives it, for greatness is not made; it is found as is the
gold. Gold cannot be made out of mud; it is uncovered. And God gives
each generation a few men of the first order; and when they have
created truth and beauty they have the right while they live to
kindness and sympathy, not harshness and cynicism. No youth winning
the first goal of his ambition was ever injured by knowing that his
father's face did not flush with pride, while his mother's eyes were
filled with happy tears, in joy of his first victory. No noble lover
but girds himself for a second struggle the more resolutely for knowing
that his noble mistress rejoiced in his first conquest. Frost itself
is not more destructive to harvest fields than harshness is to the
creative faculties. Strange that Florence gave Dante exile in exchange
for his immortal poem! Strange that London gave Milton threats of
imprisonment for the manuscript of "Paradise Lost!" Passing strange
that until his career was nearly run universities visited upon John
Ruskin o