oubtful
whether they have it in mind as they write.

Second thought must make it clear, however, that to prove ignorance of
Plato's accusation on the part of one poet and another does not at all
impair the possibility that it is his accusation which they are
answering. So multiple are the threads of influence leading from the
_Republic_ through succeeding literatures and civilizations that it
is unsafe to assert, offhand, that any modern expression of hostility to
poetry may not be traced, by a patient untangler of evidence, to a
source in the _Republic_. But even this is aside from the point.
One might concede that the wide-spread modern antagonism to poetry would
have been the same if Plato had never lived, and still maintain that in
the _Republic_ is expressed for all time whatever in anti-aesthetic
criticism is worthy of a serious answer. Whether poets themselves are
aware of it or not, we have a right to assert that in concerning
themselves with the character of the ideal poet, they are responding to
Plato's challenge.

This may not be enough to justify our faith that these defensive
expositions lead us anywhere. Let us agree that certain poets of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries have answered Plato's challenge. But
has the Poet likewise answered it? If from their independent efforts to
paint the ideal poet there has emerged a portrait as sculpturally clear
in outline as is Plato's portrait of the ideal philosopher, we shall
perhaps be justified in saying, Yes, the Poet, through a hundred mouths,
has spoken.

Frankly, the composite picture which we have been considering has not
sculptural clarity. To the casual observer it bears less resemblance to
an alto-relief than to a mosaic; no sooner do distinct patterns spring
out of myriad details than they shift under the onlooker's eyes to a
totally different form. All that we can claim for the picture is
excellence as a piece of impressionism, which one must scan with
half-closed eyes at a calculated distance, if one would appreciate its
central conception.

Apparently readers of English poetry have not taken the trouble to scan
it with such care. They may excuse their indifference by declaring that
an attempt to discover a common aesthetic principle in a collection of
views as catholic as those with which we have dealt is as absurd as an
attempt to discover philosophical truth by taking a census of general
opinion. Still, obvious as are the limitations of a