But what are you going to do when you find
John Keats an apprentice to a surgeon or apothecary? Is n't it rather
better to get another boy to sweep out the shop and shake out the powders
and stir up the mixtures, and leave him undisturbed to write his Ode on a
Grecian Urn or to a Nightingale? Oh yes, the critic I have referred to
would say, if he is John Keats; but not if he is of a much lower grade,
even though he be genuine, what there is of him. But the trouble is, the
sensitive persons who belong to the lower grades of the poetical
hierarchy do not--know their own poetical limitations, while they do feel
a natural unfitness and disinclination for many pursuits which young
persons of the average balance of faculties take to pleasantly enough.
What is forgotten is this, that every real poet, even of the humblest
grade, is an artist. Now I venture to say that any painter or sculptor of
real genius, though he may do nothing more than paint flowers and fruit,
or carve cameos, is considered a privileged person. It is recognized
perfectly that to get his best work he must be insured the freedom from
disturbances which the creative power absolutely demands, more absolutely
perhaps in these slighter artists than in the great masters. His nerves
must be steady for him to finish a rose-leaf or the fold of a nymph's
drapery in his best manner; and they will be unsteadied if he has to
perform the honest drudgery which another can do for him quite as well.
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