But because, in our own day, we are beginning, though vaguely, to foresee this new social poetry, which will soothe the suffering soul by teaching it to rise towards God through humanity; because we now stand on the threshold of a new epoch, which, but for them, we should not have reached; shall we decry those who were unable to do more for us than cast their giant forms into the gulf that held us all doubting and dismayed on the other side?  From the earliest times has genius been made the scapegoat of the generations.  Society has never lacked men who have contented themselves with reproaching the Chattertons of their day with not being patterns of self-devotion, instead of physical or moral suicides; without ever asking themselves whether they had, during their lifetime, endeavored to place aught within the reach of such but doubt and destitution.  I feel the necessity of protesting earnestly against the reaction set on foot by certain thinkers against the mighty-souled, which serves as a cloak for the cavilling spirit of mediocrity.  There is something hard, repulsive, and ungrateful in the destructive instinct which so often forgets what has been done by the great men who preceded us, to demand of them merely an account of what more might have been done.  Is the pillow of scepticism so soft to genius as to justify the conclusion that it is from egotism only that at times it rests its fevered brow thereon?  Are we so free from the evil reflected in their verse as to have a right to condemn their memory?  That evil was not introduced into the world by them.  They saw it, felt it, respired it; it was around, about, on every side of them, and they were its greatest victims.  How could they avoid reproducing it in their works?  It is not by deposing Goethe or Byron that we shall destroy either sceptical or anarchical indifference amongst us.  It is by becoming believers and organizers ourselves.  If we are such, we need fear nothing.  As is the public, so will be the poet.  If we revere enthusiasm, the fatherland, and humanity; if our hearts are pure, and our souls steadfast and patient, the genius inspired to interpret our aspirations, and bear to heaven our ideas and our sufferings, will not be wanting.  Let these statues stand.  The noble monuments of feudal times create no desire to return to the days of selfdom.

But I shall be told, there are imitators.  I know it too well; but what lasting influence can be exerted on social life by those who have no real life of their own?  They will but flutter in the void, so long as void there be.  On the day when the living shall arise to take the place of the dead, they will vanish like ghosts at cock-crow.  Shall we never be sufficiently firm in our own faith to dare to show fitting reverence for the grand typical figures of an anterior age?  It would be idle to speak of social art at all, or of the comprehension of humanity, if we could not raise altars to the new gods, without overthrowing the old.  Those only should dare to utter the sacred name of progress, whose souls possess intelligence enough to comprehend the past, and whose hearts possess sufficient poetic religion to reverence its greatness.  The temple of the true believer is not the chapel of a sect; it is a vast Pantheon, in which the glorious images of Goethe and Byron will hold their honored place, long after Goetheism and Byronism shall have ceased to be.