140 BIRDS AND POETS 



taigne. The quality of simple manhood, and the 

 universal human traits which form the bond of 

 union between man and man, — which form the basis 

 of society, of the family, of government, of friend- 

 ship, — are quite overlooked; and the credit is given 

 to some special facility, or brilliant and lucky hit. 

 Does any one doubt that the great poets and artists 

 are made up mainly of the most common universal 

 human and heroic characteristics ? — that in them, 

 though working to other ends, is all that construct 

 the soldier, the sailor, the farmer, the discoverer, 

 the bringer-to-pass in any field, and that their work 

 is good and enduring in proportion as it is saturated 

 and fertilized by the qualities of these ? Good hu- 

 man stock is the main dependence. No great poet 

 ever appeared except from a race of good fighters, 

 good eaters, good sleepers, good breeders. Litera- 

 ture dies with the decay of the M«.-literary element. 

 It is not in the spirit of something far away in the 

 clouds or under the moon, something ethereal,' vis- 

 ionary, and anti-mundane, that Angelo, Dante, and 

 Shakespeare work, but in the spirit of the common 

 Nature and the homeliest facts ; through these, and 

 not away from them, the path of the creator lies. 



It is no doubt this tendency, always more or less 

 marked in highly refined and cultivated times, to 

 forget or overlook the primary basic qualities, and 

 parade and make much of verbal and technical ac- 

 quirements, that led Huxley to speak with such bit- 

 ter scorn of the " sensual caterwauling of the liter- 

 ary classes, " for this is not the only country in which 



