Stone. We call upon the Colonel for assistance in this
dilemma. We wish to be shown our blunders that we may correct them- to
be made aware of our flippancy that we may avoid it hereafter- and
above all to have our personalities pointed out that we may proceed
forthwith with a repentant spirit, to make the amende honorable. In
default of this aid from the Editor of the Commercial we shall take it
for granted that we are neither blunderers, flippant, personal, nor
unjust.
Who will deny that in regard to individual poems no definitive
opinions can exist, so long as to Poetry in the abstract we attach
no definitive idea? Yet it is a common thing to hear our critics,
day after day, pronounce, with a positive air, laudatory or
condemnatory sentences, en masse, upon material works of whose
merits or demerits they have, in the first place, virtually
confessed an utter ignorance, in confessing it ignorance of all
determinate principles by which to regulate a decision. Poetry has
never been defined to the satisfaction of all parties. Perhaps, in the
present condition of language it never will be. Words cannot hem it
in. Its intangible and purely spiritual nature refuses to be bound
down within the widest horizon of mere sounds. But it is not,
therefore, misunderstood- at least, not by all men is it
misunderstood.
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