Explore "Lectures on English Poets" by James Russell Lowell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Mr. Lowell began by expressing his sense of the responsibility he had assumed in undertaking a course of lectures on English Poets. Few men, he said, had in them twelve hours of talk that would be worth hearing on _any_ subject; but on a subject like poetry no person could hope to combine in himself the qualities that would enable him to do justice to his theme. A lecturer on science has only to show how much he knows -- the lecturer on Poetry can only be sure how much he _feels_.
Almost everybody has a fixed opinion about the merits of certain poets which he does not like to have disturbed. There are no fanaticisms so ardent as those of Taste, especially in this country, where we are so accustomed to settle everything by vote that if a majority should decide to put a stop to the precession of the Equinoxes we should expect to hear no more of that interesting ceremony.