If Shakespeare really married a bad wife when he had conceived the
character of Beatrice he ought to have been ashamed of himself: he had
failed not only in his life, he had failed in his art. If Balzac got
into rows with his publishers he ought to be rebuked and not
commiserated, having evolved so many consistent business men from his
own inside. The German Emperor is a poet, and therefore he succeeds,
because poetry is so much nearer to reality than all the other human
occupations. He is a poet, and succeeds because the majority of men are
poets. It is true, if that matter is at all important, that the German
Emperor is not a good poet. The majority of men are poets, only they
happen to be bad poets. The German Emperor fails ridiculously, if that
is all that is in question, in almost every one of the artistic
occupations to which he addresses himself: he is neither a first-rate
critic, nor a first-rate musician, nor a first-rate painter, nor a
first-rate poet. He is a twelfth-rate poet, but because he is a poet at
all he knocks to pieces all the first-rate politicians in the war of
politics.
Having made clear my position so far, I discover with a certain amount
of interest that I have not yet got to the subject of these remarks. The
German Emperor is a poet, and although, as far as I know, every line he
ever wrote may be nonsense, he is a poet in this real sense, that he has
realised the meaning of every function he has performed.
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