Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1916 — Great Poets and Others. [ARTICLE]

Great Poets and Others.

As the centuries roll on it becomes more difficult for a poet to reach the first rank of greatness and more difficult for the world to estimate his greatness. “Whatever is new,” said Rossini, “cannot be beautiful, and whatever is beautiful cannot be new.” Although this is truer of music than of poetry, it comes home to us none the less when we compare the six pre-Victorian poets with six of their Victorian successors; that is to say, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, Scott and Burns, with Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, W. Morris and Rossetti. As for those otter six, we know they are great poets, and we know their individual greatness, but wha f of the six who come after?'