ll benefit. So high is that benefit, the benefit of
clearly feeling and of deeply enjoying the really excellent, the truly
classic in poetry, that we do well, I say, to set it fixedly before our
minds as our object in studying poets and poetry, and to make the
desire of attaining it the one principle to which, as the Imitation
says, whatever we may read or come to know, we always return. _Cum
multa legeris et cognoveris, ad unum semper oportet redire principium._

The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our judgment and
our language when we are dealing with ancient poets; the personal
estimate when we are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any
rate modern. The exaggerations due to the historic estimate are not in
themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. Their report hardly enters
the general ear; probably they do not always impose even on the
literary men who adopt them. But they lead to a dangerous abuse of
language. So we hear Caedmon, amongst our own poets, compared to
Milton. I have already noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished
French critic for 'historic origins.' Another eminent French critic,
M. Vitet, comments upon that famous document of the early poetry of his
nation, the _Chanson de Roland_. It is indeed a most interesting
document. The _joculator_ or _jongleur_ Taillefer, who was with
William the Conqueror's army at Hastings, marched before the Norman
troops, so said the tradition, singing 'of Charlemagne and of Roland
and of Oliver, and of the vassals who died at Roncevaux'; and it is
suggested that in the _Chanson de Roland_ by one Turoldus or Theroulde,
a poem preserved in a manuscript of the twelfth century in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford, we have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of
the words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigour and
freshness; it is not without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied
with seeing in it a document of some poetic value, and of very high
historic and linguistic value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful
work, a monument of epic genius. In its general design he finds the
grandiose conception, in its details he finds the constant union of
simplicity with greatness, which are the marks, he truly says, of the
genuine epic, and distinguish it from the artificial epic of literary
ages. One thinks of Homer; this is the sort of praise which is given
to Homer, and justly given. Higher praise there cannot well be,