choly man?

(_Exeunt_.)

* * * * *

POEMS OF YOUTH

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION TO POEMS.--1831.

LETTER TO MR. B--.

"WEST POINT, 1831

"DEAR B--

...

Believing only a portion of my former volume to be worthy a second
edition--that small portion I thought it as well to include in the
present book as to republish by itself. I have therefore herein combined
'Al Aaraaf' and 'Tamerlane' with other poems hitherto unprinted. Nor
have I hesitated to insert from the 'Minor Poems,' now omitted, whole
lines, and even passages, to the end that being placed in a fairer
light, and the trash shaken from them in which they were imbedded, they
may have some chance of being seen by posterity.

"It has been said that a good critique on a poem may be written by one
who is no poet himself. This, according to _your_ idea and _mine_ of
poetry, I feel to be false--the less poetical the critic, the less just
the critique, and the converse. On this account, and because there are
but few B----s in the world, I would be as much ashamed of the world's
good opinion as proud of your own. Another than yourself might here
observe, 'Shakespeare is in possession of the world's good opinion, and
yet Shakespeare is the greatest of poets. It appears then that the world
judge correctly, why should you be ashamed of their favorable judgment?'
The difficulty lies in the interpretation of the word 'judgment' or
'opinion.' The opinion is the world's, truly, but it may be called
theirs as a man would call a book his, having bought it; he did not
write the book, but it is his; they did not originate the opinion, but
it is theirs. A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet--yet
the fool has never read Shakespeare. But the fool's neighbor, who is a
step higher on the Andes of the mind, whose head (that is to say, his
more exalted thought) is too far above the fool to be seen or
understood, but whose feet (by which I mean his every-day actions) are
sufficiently near to be discerned, and by means of which that
superiority is ascertained, which _but_ for them would never have been
discovered--this neighbor asserts that Shakespeare is a great poet--the
fool believes him, and it is henceforward his _opinion_. This neighbor's
own opinion has, in like manner, been adopted from one above _him_, and
so, ascendingl