The Function of the Poet, and Other EssaysLowell, James Russell
History
The Function of the Poet, and Other Essays
Lowell, James Russell
Literature -- History and criticism
Cavalier grandfather, and whose first known verses were addressed to the
non-juring primate Sancroft after his deprivation, to become first a
Tory and then a conniver at the restoration of the Stuarts as the best
device for preventing a foreign succession and an endless chance of
civil war. A man of Swift's way of thinking would hardly have balked at
the scruple of creed, for he would not have deemed it possible that the
Pretender should have valued a kingdom at any lower rate than his
great-grandfather had done before him.
The more important part of Mr. Forster's fresh material is to come in
future volumes, if now, alas! we are ever to have them. For some of what
he gives us in this we can hardly thank him. One of the manuscripts he
has unearthed is the original version of "Baucis and Philemon" as it was
before it had passed under the criticism of Addison. He seems to think
it in some respects better than the revised copy though in our judgment
it entirely justifies the wisdom of the critic who counselled its
curtailment and correction. The piece as we have hitherto had it comes
as near poetry as anything Swift ever wrote except "Cadenus and
Vanessa," though neither of them aspires above the region of cleverness
and fancy. Indeed, it is misleading to talk of the poetry of one whose
fatal gift was an eye that disidealized. But we are not concerned here
with the discussion of Swift's claim to the title of poet. What we are
concerned about is to protest in the interests of good literature
against the practice, now too common, of hunting out and printing what
the author would doubtless have burned. It is unfair to the dead writer
and the living reader by disturbing that unitary impression which every
good piece of work aims at making, and is sure to make, only in
proportion to the author's self-denial and his skill in
The last and greatest art, the art to blot.
We do not wish, nor have we any right to know, those passages through
which the castigating pen has been drawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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