Abstract

Even the best of artists are human, and therefore capable of turning out bad work. The father of poets has set his children the example of nodding, and small blame to his children if in this, as in other matters, they have followed where Homer led. Critics, that hardy and self-sacrificing race of beings who voluntarily incur the enmity of artists for the sake of the common welfare, have to classify the various manners and causes of nodding in poets. I do not claim to be a critic, but I want to call your attention to a particular kind of nodding which presents a curious problem in the theory of art. I will call it the nod of the uncongenial subject.