Taal en Letteren. Jaargang 10

Wat is een dichter?

There is this unmistakable stamp on all the great poets - that, however in little things they may fall below themselves, whenever there comes a great and noble thing to say, they say it greatly and nobly, and bear themselves most easily in the royalties of thought and language. - And it is for this kind of sight, which we call insight, and not for any faculty of observation and description, that we value the poet. It is in proportion as he has this that he is an adequate expresser, and not a juggler with words. It is by means of this that for every generation of man he plays the part of ‘namer.’ Before him, as before Adam, the creation passes to be named anew: first the material world; then the world of passions and emotions; then the world of ideas.

James Russell Lowell, The function of the Poet.

Century Magazine Januari 1894: 433.