Of the poet we do not ask everything, but the best expression of the _best_ of everything. If a man attain this but once, though only in a frail song, he is immortal; while every one who falls just short of it, if only by a hair’s breadth, is as sure to be forgotten. There is a wonderful secret that poets have not yet learned, and this is that small men cannot do great things, but that the small man who can do small things _best_ is great. The most fatal ill-success is to almost succeed, as, in Italy, the worst lemons are those large ones which come nearest to being oranges. The secret of permanent fame is to express some idea the most compactly, whether in your life, your deed, or your writing. I think that if anything is clear in history, it is that every idea, whether in morals, politics, or art, which is laboring to express itself, feels of many men and throws them aside before it finds the one in whom it can incarnate itself. The noble idea of the Papacy (for it _was_ a noble one--nothing less than the attempt to embody the higher law in a human institution) whispered itself to many before it got the man it wanted in Gregory the Great. And Protestantism carried numbers to the stake ere it entered into Luther: a man whom nature made on purpose--all asbestos so that he could not burn. Doubtless Apollo spoiled many a reed before he found one that would do to pipe through even to the sheep of Admetus, and the land of song is scattered thick with reeds which the Muse has experimented with and thrown away. It is from such a one that I am going to try to draw a few notes of music and of mirth to-night. Contemporary with Chaucer lived a man who satirized the clergy and gave some lively pictures of manners before the “Canterbury Tales” were written. His poem was very popular, as appears from the number of manuscript copies of it remaining, and after being forgotten for two centuries, it was revived again, printed, widely read, and helped onward the Reformation in England. It has been reprinted twice during the present century. This assures us that it must have had a good deal of original force and vivacity. It may be considered, however, to be tolerably defunct now. This poem is the vision of Piers Ploughman.