Excerpt from Poets and Poetry: Being Articles Reprinted From the Literary Supplement of "the Times" The poet Rogers is reported to have had a saying, 'when a new book comes out I read an Old one.' If mottoes were any longer in fashion, that remark would do as well as any I could find to put before this little volume. Not that, Of course, the essays here collected carry the doctrine Of 'the Old is better' at all so far as Rogers. Indeed they could not well suggest the ignoring of new books; for it is to new books that they ...
Read More
Excerpt from Poets and Poetry: Being Articles Reprinted From the Literary Supplement of "the Times" The poet Rogers is reported to have had a saying, 'when a new book comes out I read an Old one.' If mottoes were any longer in fashion, that remark would do as well as any I could find to put before this little volume. Not that, Of course, the essays here collected carry the doctrine Of 'the Old is better' at all so far as Rogers. Indeed they could not well suggest the ignoring of new books; for it is to new books that they owe their existence. A man who never reads a new author is in danger of making his mind a mere museum of fossils. Or, if that puts it too strongly - for the immortals are after all the immortals, and live exempt from fears of fossil decay - yet the new are necessary interpreters of those among the Old who possess genius. For it is the privilege of genius to be inexhaustible. Every generation reads Dante afresh, and for each in turn he is, or may be, new-born. If a man could exclude from his mind all sub sequent literature and read Homer or Virgil just as the Alexandrian or Augustan scholars read them, he would simply have sacrificed life to archaeology, and his Homer, still more his Virgil, would be but a small fraction Of the full stature of the poet, which it has taken many generations of the human mind and many races of men to see in such completeness as we can see it to-day. The new then are necessary to the Old. But even less than the Old can they stand alone. That is true even Of original and creative work, which builds on the sands if it forgets that the human mind is a thing of continuous life, for which all new departures must find their root and starting-point in something already accepted. Still more. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at ... This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Read Less
Add this copy of Poets and Poetry Being Articles Reprinted From the to cart. $16.81, new condition, Sold by Paperbackshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bensenville, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2019 by Forgotten Books.