THE FLOWER OF THE MIND
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not the only--liberty. Even so an intellectual education might
assuredly confer freedom upon first and solitary thoughts, and
confidence and composure upon the sallies of impetuous courage. In
a word, it should make a studious anthologist quite sure about
genius. And all who have bestowed, or helped in bestowing, the
liberating education have given their student the authority to be
free. Personal and singular the choice in such a book must be, not
without right.

Claiming and disclaiming so much, the gatherers may follow one
another to harvest, and glean in the same fields in different
seasons, for the repetition of the work can never be altogether a
repetition. The general consent of criticism does not stand still;
and moreover, a mere accident has until now left a poet of genius
of the past here and there to neglect or obscurity. This is not
very likely to befall again; the time has come when there is little
or nothing left to discover or rediscover in the sixteenth century
or the seventeenth; we know that there does not lurk another
Crashaw contemned, or another Henry Vaughan disregarded, or another
George Herbert misplaced. There is now something like finality of
knowledge at least; and therefore not a little error in the past is
ready to be repaired. This is the result of time. Of the slow
actions and reactions of critical taste there might be something to
say, but nothing important. No loyal anthologist perhaps will
consent to acknowledge these tides; he will hardly do his work well
unless he believe it to be stable and perfect; nor, by the way,
will he judge worthily in the name of others unless he be resolved
to judge intrepidly for himself.

Inasmuch as even the best of all poems are the best upon
innumerable degrees, the size of most anthologies has gone far to
decide what degrees are to be gathered in and what left without.
The best might make a very small volume, and be indeed the best, or
a very large volume, and be still indeed the best. But my labour
has been to do somewhat differently--to gather nothing that did not
overpass a certain boundary-line of genius. Gray's Elegy, for