
“Poetry, the noble brotherhood who speak in tones of harmony, grandeur & pathos.”
Preface to Poets & Poetry of Scotland Vol 1 , Blackie & Son , Edinburgh 1876
Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo
Musa loqui, præter laudem nullius avaris. . .
Line 323
Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC)
Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui, præter laudem nullius avaris. . .
“Poetry, the noble brotherhood who speak in tones of harmony, grandeur & pathos.”
Preface to Poets & Poetry of Scotland Vol 1 , Blackie & Son , Edinburgh 1876
“Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!”
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.
Personal Talk, Stanza 4
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants. This last faculty is one of the most essential and elusive.
Section 90
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
“Come then, expressive silence, muse His praise.”
Source: Hymn (1730), line 118.
Standing by Words: Essays (2011), Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms (1982)
Source: Pensées Philosophiques (1746), Ch. 5, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
Personal Talk, Stanza 4.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)