LUCID LITEEATDKE 183 



them an appeal to his copious animal spirits, and 

 his love of sensuous beauty. Wordsworth would 

 understand Scott much better than Scott would un- 

 derstand Wordsworth. The ancient poets probably 

 would not understand the moderns nearly as well as 

 the moderns understand the ancients. We are fur- 

 ther along on the road of human experience. 



Then, we may understand a work and not appre- 

 ciate it, not respond to its appeal. Appreciation is 

 based upon kinship. We are more in sympathy 

 with some types of mind than with others of equal 

 parts. The most impersonal and judicious of critics 

 cannot escape the law of elective affinities. Some 

 books find us more than others of similar merit. 

 See how people differ, and are bound to differ, about 

 Whitman, and it is because his aim is not merely to 

 give the reader poetic truth disassociated from all, 

 personal qualities and traits, but to give him him-, 

 self. We cannot separate the poet from the man^ 

 and if we do not respond to the man, to his type^ 

 to his quality, to his wholesale and radical de» 

 mocracy, we shall not respond to the poet. If we 

 all read authors only through our taste in belles- 

 lettres, through our love of literary truth, we 

 should agree in our estimate of them aecoiding as 

 our tastes agreed. But the- feeling we bring tO' 

 them is very complex. Character, predisposition, 

 natural aifinities, race traits, all play a part. We. 

 are very apt to agree about such a poet as Milton, 

 because the personal element plays so small a partt 

 in his poetry, JX we da.not.get pqetic truth in hint 



