Great Poets discover themselves. Little Poets have to be “discovered” by somebody else. Otherwise they would live and die in the shadow of decent obscurity, unheard, unseen, unknown. And it is seriously open to question whether their so living and dying would not be an advantage to society in the abating of a certain measure of boredom. Looking back upon the motley crowd of Little Poets who had their day of “discovery” and “boom” at the very period when the thunderous voice of the Muse at her grandest was shaking the air through the inspired lips of Byron, Shelley and Keats, and noting to what dusty oblivion their little names and lesser works are now relegated without regret, it is difficult to understand why they were ever dragged from the respectable retirement of common-place mediocrity by their critic-contemporaries. Byron was scorned, Shelley neglected, and Keats killed by these same critics;--neither of the three were “discovered” or “made.” Their creation was not of man, but of their own innate God-given genius, and, according to the usual fate attending such divine things, the fastidious human _dilettante_ of their day would have none of them. He set up his own verse-making Mumbo-Jumbo; and one Pye was Laureate. Pye was Laureate,--yet Byron lived, and there was a reigning monarch in England, strange as these assorted facts will seem to all intellectual posterity. For a monarch’s word,--even a prince’s word,--must always carry a certain weight of influence, and one asks wonderingly how, under such circumstances, that word came to be left unsaid? No voice from the Throne called the three greatest geniuses of the era to receive any honour due to their rare gifts and quality. On the contrary they were cast out as unvalued rubbish from their native land, and the Little Poets had their way. Pye continued to write maudlin rhymes unmolested, never dreaming that the only memory we should keep of him or of his twaddle, would be the one scathing line of the banished Byron: Better to err with Pope than shine with Pye! And feeble penny whistles played trumpery tunes to the languid votaries of “cultchaw” in those days, and pennywhistle verse was voted “classic” and supreme; but ever and anon the Nation turned a listening ear across the seas and caught the music made by its outlawed singers,--music it valued even then, and treasures now among its priceless and imperishable glories. For the Nation knows what true Poetry is,--and no “discoverer” will ever force it to accept a tallow candle for a star.