Por la boca de su herida.

One last word.  It may have been noticed that in this somewhat long journey through so many different subjects, the author has generally refrained from resting his personal views upon texts or citations of authorities.  It is not, however, because he did not have them at his hand.

“If the poet establishes things that are impossible according to the rules of his art, he makes a mistake unquestionably; but it ceases to be a mistake when by this means he has reached the end that he aimed at; for he has found what he sought,”—­“They take for nonsense whatever the weakness of their intellects does not allow them to understand.  They are especially prone to call absurd those wonderful passages in which the poet, in order the better to enforce his argument, departs, if we may so express it, from his argument.  In fact, the precept which makes it a rule sometimes to disregard rules, is a mystery of the art which it is not easy to make men understand who are absolutely without taste and whom a sort of abnormality of mind renders insensible to those things which ordinarily impress men.”

Who said the first?  Aristotle.  Who said the last?  Boileau.  By these two specimens you will see that the author of this drama might, as well as another, have shielded himself with proper names and taken refuge behind others’ reputations.  But he preferred to leave that style of argument to those who deem it unanswerable, universal and all-powerful.  As for himself, he prefers reasons to authorities; he has always cared more for arms than for coats-of-arms.

October, 1827.

[Footnote A:  Victor Hugo (1802-1883) the chief of the romantic school in France, issued in the Preface to “Cromwell” the manifesto of the movement.  Poet, dramatist, and novelist, Hugo remained through a long life the most conspicuous man of letters in France; and in the document here printed he laid down the principles which revolutionized the literary world of his time.]

PREFACE TO LEAVES OF GRASS

BY WALT WHITMAN. (1855)[A]

America does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions ... accepts the lesson with calmness ... is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms ... perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house ... perceives that it waits a little while in the door ... that it was fittest for its days ... that its action has descended to the stalwart and well shaped heir who approaches ... and that he shall be fittest for his days.