Being demanded of what city or country he was, Diogenes
answered that he was a 'cosmopolite'; in this word widening the range
of men's thoughts, bringing in not merely a word new to Greek ears, but
a thought which, however commonplace and familiar to us now, must have
been most novel and startling to those whom he addressed. I am far from
asserting that contempt for his citizenship in its narrower sense may
not have mingled with this his challenge for himself of a citizenship
wide as the world; but there was not the less a very remarkable
reaching out here after truths which were not fully born into the world
until _He_ came, in whom and in whose Church all national differences
and distinctions are done away.
As occupying somewhat of a middle place between those more deliberate
word-makers and the multitude whose words rather grow of themselves
than are made, we must not omit him who is a _maker_ by the very right
of his name--I mean, the poet. That creative energy with which he is
endowed, 'the high-flying liberty of conceit proper to the poet,' will
not fail to manifest itself in this region as in others. Extending the
domain of thought and feeling, he will scarcely fail to extend that
also of language, which does not willingly lag behind. And the loftier
his moods, the more of this maker he will be. The passion of such times,
the all-fusing imagination, will at once suggest and justify audacities
in speech, upon which in calmer moods he would not have ventured, or,
venturing, would have failed to carry others with him: for it is only
the fluent metal that runs easily into novel shapes and moulds.
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