Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/39

Rh little note, and while the seasonable chorus blends, it is humored by some and endured by most, quite as a matter of course, and the world goes on as usual. Human suffering may have been greater when the rhapsodist flourished and printing was unknown, when one was waylaid at the corners of the market-place, and there was no escape but in flight or assassination. And if our object were to train poets, and a past-master were on the rostrum, his teachings would be futile unless nature reasserted her averages. Fourier accounted for one poet in his phalanstery of a thousand souls; yet a shrewder estimate would allow but one memorable poet to a thousand phalansteries, in spite of the fact that even nature suspends her rules in countenance of youth's prerogative, and unfailingly supplies a laureate for every college class. With respect to training, the catalogues term a painter the pupil of Bonnat, of Duran, of Cabanel; a musician, pupil of Rubinstein or Liszt. But the poet studies in his own Nature both makes and trains a poet. atelier. He is not made, his poetry is not made, by a priori rules, any more than a language is made by the grammarians and philologists, whose true function is simply to report it.

Yet even the poet has his teachers: first of all, since poetry is vocal, those from whom he learns the speech wherewith he lisps in numbers. In the nursery, or on the playground, he is as much at school as any young artist taking his initial lessons in the drawing-class, or a young singer put to his first