A LIST OF BOOKS - JScholarship

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 15
the same.
Greatness in a work suggests an
adequate instrumentality ; and none of the
lower incitements, however they may avail
to initiate or even effect many considerable
displays of power, simulating the nobler
inspiration to which they are mistakenly
referred, have been found able, under the
ordinary conditions of humanity, to task
themselves to the end of so exacting a performance
as a poet's complete work.
As
soon will the galvanism
that provokes to
violent action the muscles of a corpse, induce
it to cross the chamber steadily: sooner.
The love of displaying power for the display's
sake, the love of riches, of distinction, of
notoriety,—the desire of a triumph over
rivals, and the vanity in the applause of
friends, — each and all of such whetted
appetites grow
intenser by exercise and
increasingly sagacious as to the best and
readiest means of self-appeasement,—while