If we take it as read....

[Leanne]

I still think one of the best things Shelley wrote is his "Defence of Poetry" essay; similarly, Coleridge's "Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit" makes great reading and even Eliot wrote an essay or two that doesn't annoy me ("The Perfect Critic" springs to mind). I tend to think that once the initial passion of poetry has settled and one can properly reflect on the process, more profound thoughts emerge. In the case of these famous poets, I believe that successive generations of readers have been coloured by these more profound thoughts and applied them (often unconsciously) to the poems themselves, saying "he believed thus-and-so, therefore this image is a representation of this belief". When we learn about the classics, we (hopefully) learn from someone who is -- I hesitate to say "tainted", but there you are -- by prior knowledge of the author, thus the filter is set. This ties in with your idea of how artistic taste develops, Edward.

When a great author, and there have been many, writes a large body of work we cannot help but find at least one or two pieces that speak to us. For myself, I greatly prefer "Gunga Din" to "If...", as much as I appreciate "If..." as a wonderful poem. The authors that produce but one or two masterpieces in their entire lives, however -- well, perhaps they're the greatest artists after all, since we have so little to choose from and no safety net.