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or short swallow-flights of song. He wished to leave behind him 

 a literary whole, gathered up into unity, and with a defined pur- 

 pose from first to last, stately, with massive proportions, and 

 manifold embellishments. 



And in connection with this, note his conviction of the high 

 calling of the Poet, and of his responsibility as an educator of his 

 age. He held that the poet's function was not to descend to the 

 level of other men but to endeavour to raise them up to his 

 own level. As he wrote to Sir George Beaumont, from 

 Goslar, '• The poet is a teacher. I wish to be considered as a 

 teacher, or as nothing." The strength of resolution with which he 

 pursued this purpose has probably had few, if any, parallels in 

 literature. Fiercely abused, even ridiculed — not by puny assail- 

 ants, but by the accredited critics of the day — he went on, with a 

 grand tenacity of purpose, to write fresh poems, of the same 

 character ; the creative impulse welling up within him, like the 

 waters of a perennial spring. He felt sublimely sure of the verdict 

 of posterity. And yet, it was not his confidence that the judg- 

 ment of contemporaries would be reversed that kept him loyal to 

 his vocation ; but his conviction of the inherent worth of that 

 vocation, his belief in himself, and in the ends to which his life 

 was devoted. His sense of the dignity of his calling, as a Poet, 

 is the greatest in literature. He expresses it in a noble sonnet to 

 his friend Haydon — 



High is our calling, friend ! creative art 



Demands the service of a mind and heart 



Though sensitive, yet in their weakest part 



Heroically fashioned — to infuse 



Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse, 



While the whole world seems adverse to desert, etc 



Mr. Lowell thinks that his early conviction of being " a 



dedicated spirit" led to "a one-sided, as well as to an intense 



development of his intellectual powers ; and that this was fostered 



by the solitude of his life, which deprived him of any standard of 



proportion outside himself, by which to test the comparative value 



of his thoughts." Let us grant it. But had he possessed such 



' a standard ' the world would probably have been deprived of 



