dilettantism unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end.  It may be said that the more we know about a classic the better we shall enjoy him; and, if we lived as long as Methuselah and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is plausible in theory.  But the case here is much the same as the case with the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys.  The elaborate philological groundwork which we requite them to lay is in theory an admirable preparation for appreciating the Greek and Latin authors worthily.  The more thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall be able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors.  True, if time were not so short, and schoolboys’ wits not so soon tired and their power of attention exhausted; only, as it is, the elaborate philological preparation goes on, but the authors are little known and less enjoyed.  So with the investigator of “historic origins” in poetry.  He ought to enjoy the true classic all the better for his investigations; he often is distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and with the less good he overbusies himself, and is prone to over-rate it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost him.

The idea of tracing historic origins and historical relationships cannot be absent from a compilation like the present.  And naturally the poets to be exhibited in it will be assigned to those persons for exhibition who are known to prize them highly, rather than to those who have no special inclination towards them.  Moreover the very occupation with an author, and the business of exhibiting him, disposes us to affirm and amplify his importance.  In the present work, therefore, we are sure of frequent temptation to adopt the historic estimate, or the personal estimate, and to forget the real estimate; which latter, nevertheless, we must employ if we are to make poetry yield us its full benefit.  So high is that benefit, the benefit of clearly feeling and of deeply enjoying the really excellent, the truly classic in poetry, that we do well, I say, to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in studying poets and poetry, and to make the desire of attaining it the one principle to which, as the Imitation says, whatever we may read or come to know, we always return. Cum multa legeris et cognoveris, ad unum semper oportet redire principium.[71]

The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our judgment and our language when we are dealing with ancient poets; the personal estimate when we are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any rate modern.  The exaggerations due to the historic estimate are not in themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity.  Their report hardly enters the general ear; probably they do not always impose even on the literary men who adopt them.  But they lead to a dangerous abuse of language.  So we hear Caedmon,[72] amongst, our own poets, compared to Milton.  I