genius for soothing the reader with a pathos that is not anguish and a
humor that is not cynicism, this genius belongs to Mr. Riley in a
degree I have found in no other writer in all literature.

Of course, Mr. Riley is essentially a lyric poet. But his spirit is that
of Walt Whitman; he speaks the universal democracy, the equality of man,
the hatred of assumption and snobbery, that our republic stands for, if
it stands for anything. Now downright didacticism in a poet is an
abomination. But if a poet has no right to ponder the meanings of
things, the feelings of man for man and the higher "criticism of life,"
then no one has. If to Pope's "The proper study of mankind is man," you
add "nature" and "nature's God," you will fairly well outline the poet's
field.

Mere art (Heaven save the "mere"!) is not, and has never been, enough to
place a poet among the great spirits of the world. It has furnished a
number of nimble mandolinists and exquisite dilettants
for lazy moods. But great poetry must always be something more than
sweetmeats; it must be food--temptingly cooked, winningly served, well
spiced and well accompanied, but yet food to strengthen the blood and
the sinews of the soul.

Therefore I make so bold as to insist that even in a lyrist there should
be something more than the prosperity or the dirge of personal _amours_:
there should be a sympathy with the world-joy, the world-suffering, and
the world-kinship. It is this attitude toward lyric poetry that makes me
think Mr. Riley a poet whose exquisite art is lavished on humanity so
deep-sounding as to commend him to the acceptance of immortality among
the highest lyrists.

Horace was an acute thinker and a frank speaker on the problems of life.
This didacticism seems not to have harmed his artistic welfare, for he
has undoubtedly been the most popular poet that ever wrote. Consider the
magnitude and the enthusiasm of his audience! He has been the personal
chum of everyone that ever read Latinity. But Horace, when not exalted
with his inspired preachments on the art of life and the arts of poetry
and love, was a bitter cynic redeemed by great self-depreciation and
joviality. The son of a slave, he was too fond of court life to talk
democracy.

Bobby Burns was a thorough child of the people, and is more like Mr.
Riley in every way than any other poet. Yet he, too, had a vicious
cynicism, and he never had the polished art that enriches some of Mr.
Riley's non-