It was shown how bygone objects and incidents come down to us invested in peculiar attractions:  this the poet knows and feels, and the probabilities are that he transferred the incidents of to-day, with all their poetical and moral suggestions, to the romantic long-ago, partly from a feeling of prudence, and partly that he himself was under this spell of antiquity, How many a Troubadour, who recited tales of king Arthur, had his incidents furnished him by the events of his own time!  And thus it is the many are attracted to the poetry of things past, yet impervious to the poetry of things present.  But this retrograde movement in the poet, painter, or sculptor (except in certain cases as will subsequently appear), if not the result of necessity, is an error in judgment or a culpable dishonesty.  For why should he not acknowledge the source of his inspiration, that others may drink of the same spring with himself; and perhaps drink deeper and a clearer draught?—­For the water is unebbing and exhaustless, and fills the more it is emptied:  why then should it be filtered through his tank where he can teach men to drink it at the fountain?

If, as every poet, every painter, every sculptor will acknowledge, his best and most original ideas are derived from his own times:  if his great lessonings to piety, truth, charity, love, honor, honesty, gallantry, generosity, courage, are derived from the same source; why transfer them to distant periods, and make them not things of to-day? Why teach us to revere the saints of old, and not our own family-worshippers?  Why to admire the lance-armed knight, and not the patience-armed hero of misfortune?  Why to draw a sword we do not wear to aid and oppressed damsel, and not a purse which we do wear to rescue an erring one?  Why to worship a martyred St. Agatha, and not a sick woman attending the sick?  Why teach us to honor an Aristides or a Regulus, and not one who pays an equitable, though to him ruinous, tax without a railing accusation?  And why not teach us to help what the laws cannot help?—­Why teach us to hate a Nero or an Appius, and not an underselling oppressor of workmen and betrayer of women and children?  Why to love a Ladie in bower, and not a wife’s fireside?  Why paint or poetically depict the horrible race of Ogres and Giants, and not show Giant Despair dressed in that modern habit he walks the streets in?  Why teach men what were great and good deeds in the old time, neglecting to show them any good for themselves?—­Till these questions are answered absolutory to the artist, it were unwise to propose the other question—­Why a poet, painter or sculptor is not honored and loved as formerly?  “As formerly,” says some avowed sceptic in old world transcendency and golden age affairs, “I believe formerly the artist was as much respected and cared for as he is now.  ’Tis true the Greeks granted an immunity from taxation to some of their artists, who were often great men in the state, and even the companions of princes.  And are not some of our poets peers?  Have not some of our artists received knighthood from the hand of their Sovereign, and have not some of them received pensions?”