The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.  A clearer, deeper sense of the best[67] is the most precious benefit which we can gather from a poetical collection such as the present.  And yet in the very nature and conduct of such a collection there is inevitably something which tends to obscure in us the consciousness of what our benefit should be, and to distract us from the pursuit of it.  We should therefore steadily set it before our minds at the outset, and should compel ourselves to revert constantly to the thought of it as we proceed.

Yes; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best, the really excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, should be present in our minds and should govern our estimate of what we read.  But this real estimate, the only true one, is liable to be superseded, if we are not watchful, by two other kinds of estimate, the historic estimate and the personal estimate, both of which are fallacious.  A poet or a poem may count to us historically, they may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves, and they may count to us really.  They may count to us historically.  The course of development of a nation’s language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a poet’s work as a stage in this course of development we may easily bring ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise in criticising it; in short, to over-rate it.  So arises in our poetic judgments the fallacy caused by the estimate which we may call historic.  Then, again, a poet or a poem may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves.  Our personal affinities, likings, and circumstances, have great power to sway our estimate of this or that poet’s work, and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry than in itself it really possesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high importance.  Here also we over-rate the object of our interest, and apply to it a language of praise which is quite exaggerated.  And thus we get the source of a second fallacy in our poetic judgments—­the fallacy caused by an estimate which we may call personal.

Both fallacies are natural.  It is evident how naturally the study of the history and development of a poetry may incline a man to pause over reputations and works once conspicuous but now obscure, and to quarrel with a careless public for skipping, in obedience to mere tradition and habit, from one famous name or work in its national poetry to another, ignorant of what it misses, and of the reason for keeping what it keeps, and of the whole process of growth in its poetry.  The French have become diligent students of their own early poetry, which they long neglected; the study makes many of them dissatisfied with their so-called classical poetry, the court-tragedy of the