m,

"Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

III

Caliban

Your great poet is eminently sane. Not that this is the conception
current concerning him--the reverse being the common idea--that a poet
is a being afflicted with some strange and unclassified rabies. He is
supposed to be possessed, like the Norwegian Berserker, whose frenzy
amounted to volcanic tumult. The genesis of misconceptions, however,
is worth one's while to study; for in a majority of cases there is in
the misconception a sufficient flavoring of truth to make the erroneous
notion pass as true. At bottom, the human soul loves truth, nor
willingly believes or receives a lie. Our intellectual sin is
synecdoche, the putting a part truth for a whole truth. Generalization
is dangerous intellectual exercise. Our premise is insufficient, and
our conclusion is self-sufficient, like some strutting scion of a
decayed house. Trace the origin of this idea of a poet's non-sanity.
He was not ordinary, as other men, but was extraordinary, and as such
belonged to the upper rather than the lower world; for we must be
convinced how wholly the ancients kept the super-earthly in mind in
their logical processes--an attitude wise and in consonance with the
wisest of this world's thinking. Heaven must not be left out of our
computations, just as the sun must not be omitted in writing the
history of a rose or a spike of golden-rod. In harmony with this
exalted origin of the poet went the notion that he was under an
afflatus. A breath from behind the world blew in his face; nay, more,
a breath from behind the world blew noble ideas into his soul, and he
spake as one inspired of the gods. This conception of a poet is high
and worthy; nothing gross grimes it with common dust. Yet from so
noble a thought--because the thought was partial--grew the gross
misconception of the poet as beyond law, as not amenable to social and
moral customs, as one who might transgress the moral code with
impunity, and stand unreproved, even blameless. He was thought to be
his own law--a man whose course should no more be reproved or hindered
than the winds. The poet's supremacy brought us to a wrong conclusion.
The philosopher we assu