author of them. The plain man looks to those peaks and summits of poetry and finds them beyond all comparison with the lower levels where the historical critic is working out his survey. The critic will go wrong unless he recognises this other point of view and the fact that a good poem has a value of its own which nothing can spoil, as nothing in the world can take the place of it. The essence of a poem is that it should be remembered for what it is, not that it should be catalogued in an historical series in relation with what it is not. This is not meant to depreciate criticism or the history of literature, but to show their necessary limitations; which perhaps are sufficiently obvious.
It is not enough for a poem that it should be what is called 'touching'; one remembers Goethe's deadly saying about the hearts of sensibility: 'any bungler can touch them.' But it remains true that if a poem is not wonderful it is nothing; here as in philosophy wonder is the beginning of wisdom, and the end too, when the wonder of novelty
