And why, it may be asked, have I entered into this explanation respecting a matter so unimportant as the admission or exclusion of the poem in question?  I have done so, because I was anxious to avow that the sole reason for its exclusion was that which has been stated above; and that it has not been excluded in deference to the opinion which many critics of the present day appear to entertain against subjects chosen from distant times and countries:  against the choice, in short, of any subjects but modern ones.

“The poet,” it is said,[6] and by an intelligent critic, “the poet who would really fix the public attention must leave the exhausted past, and draw his subjects from matters of present import, and therefore both of interest and novelty.”

Now this view I believe to be completely false.  It is worth examining, inasmuch as it is a fair sample of a class of critical dicta everywhere current at the present day, having a philosophical form and air, but no real basis in fact; and which are calculated to vitiate the judgment of readers of poetry, while they exert, so far as they are adopted, a misleading influence on the practice of those who make it.

What are the eternal objects of poetry, among all nations and at all times?  They are actions; human actions; possessing an inherent interest in themselves, and which are to be communicated in an interesting manner by the art of the poet.  Vainly will the latter imagine that he has everything in his own power; that he can make an intrinsically inferior action equally delightful with a more excellent one by his treatment of it:  he may indeed compel us to admire his skill, but his work will possess, within itself, an incurable defect.

The poet, then, has in the first place to select an excellent action; and what actions are the most excellent?  Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections:  to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time.  These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.  The modernness or antiquity of an action, therefore, has nothing to do with its fitness for poetical representation; this depends upon its inherent qualities.  To the elementary part of our nature, to our passions, that which is great and passionate is eternally interesting; and interesting solely in proportion to its greatness and to its passion.  A great human action of a thousand years ago is more interesting to it than a smaller human action of to-day, even though upon the representation of this last the most consummate skill may have been expended, and though it has the advantage of appealing by its modern language, familiar manners, and contemporary allusions, to all our transient feelings and interests.  These, however, have no right to demand of a poetical work that it shall satisfy them; their claims are to be directed elsewhere.  Poetical works belong to the domain of our permanent passions:  let them interest these, and the voice of all subordinate claims upon them is at once silenced.