ers may point out that we should have had more
right to expect concord if we had shown some discernment in sifting true
poets from false. Those who have least claim to the title of poet have
frequently been most garrulous in voicing their convictions. Moreover,
these pseudo-poets outnumber genuine poets one hundred to one, yet no
one in his right mind would contend that their expressions of opinion
represent more than a straw vote, if they conflict with the judgment of
a single true poet.

Still, our propensity for listening to the rank breath of the multitude
is not wholly indefensible. In the first place pseudo-poets have not
created so much discord as one might suppose. A lurking sense of their
own worthlessness has made them timid of utterance except as they echo
and prolong a note that has been struck repeatedly by singers of
reputation. This echoing, it may be added, has sometimes been effective
in bringing the traditions of his craft to the attention of a young
singer as yet unaware of them. Thus Bowles and Chivers, neither of whom
has very strong claim to the title of bard, yet were in a measure
responsible for the minor note in Coleridge's and Poe's description of
the typical poet.

Even when the voices of spurious bards have failed to chime with the
others, the resulting discord has not been of serious moment. A
counterfeit coin may be as good a touchstone for the detection of pure
silver, as is pure silver for the detection of counterfeit. Not only are
a reader's views frequently clarified by setting a poetaster beside a
poet as a foil, but poets themselves have clarified their views because
they have been incited by declarations in false verse to express their
convictions more unreservedly than they should otherwise have done.
Pseudo-poets have sometimes been of genuine benefit by their
exaggeration of some false note which they have adopted from poetry of
the past. No sooner do they exaggerate such a note, than a concerted
shout of protest from true poets drowns the erroneous statement, and
corrects the misleading impression which careless statements in earlier
verse might have left with us. Thus the morbid singer exhibited in minor
American verse of the last century, and the vicious singer lauded in one
strain of English verse, performed a genuine service by calling forth
repudiation, by major poets, of traits which might easily lead a singer
in the direction of morbidity and vice.

The confusion of sou