It requires great courage in a man of letters to handle the
contemporary practical questions; not because he then has all men for
his rivals, but because of the infinite entanglements of the problem,
and the waste of strength in gathering unripe fruits. The task is
superhuman; and the poet knows well, that a little time will do more
than the most puissant genius. Time stills the loud noise of
opinions, sinks the small, raises the great, so that the true emerges
without effort and in perfect harmony to all eyes; but the truth of
the present hour, except in particulars and single relations, is
unattainable. Each man can very well know his own part of duty, if
he will; but to bring out the truth for beauty and as literature,
surmounts the powers of art. The most elaborate history of to-day
will have the oddest dislocated look in the next generation. The
historian of to-day is yet three ages off. The poet cannot descend
into the turbid present without injury to his rarest gifts. Hence
that necessity of isolation which genius has always felt. He must
stand on his glass tripod, if he would keep his electricity.
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