_Poetae nascuntur_.--Wonderful is man. Knowing nothing about it, he asserts the existence of an objective impossibility. Even a little while ago, before the invention of the telephone and telegraph, men would have declared it impossible for Europe to converse with America. Now it is possible. We cannot produce poets, therefore we say they are born. Certainly we cannot make a child a poet by forcing him to study literary models, from the most ancient to the most modern. Neither will anybody hear us in America no matter how loud we shout here. To make a poet of a man, he must not be developed along ordinary lines. Perhaps books should be kept from him. Perhaps it is necessary to perform some apparently dangerous operation on him: fracture his skull or throw him out of a fourth-storey window. I will refrain from recommending these methods as a substitute for paedagogy. But that is not the point. Look at the great men, and the poets. Except John Stuart Mill and a couple of other positivist thinkers, who had learned fathers and virtuous mothers, none of the great men can boast of, or better, complain of, a proper upbringing. In their lives nearly always the decisive part was played by accident, accident which reason would dub meaninglessness, if reason ever dared raise its voice against obvious success. Something like a broken skull or a fall from the fourth floor--not metaphorically, but often absolutely literally--has proved the commencement, usually concealed but occasionally avowed, of the activity of genius. But we repeat automatically: _poetae nascuntur_, and are deeply convinced that this extraordinary truth is so lofty it needs no verification. 6