Certainly they should have no party politics.

True to say, journalism and literature and politics are as wide apart as the poles.

From Bolingbroke, the most splendid of the world's failures, to Thackeray, one of its greatest masters of letters--who happily did not get the chance he sought in parliamentary life to fall--both English history and American history are full of illustrations to this effect.

Except in the comic opera of French politics the poet, the artist, invested with power, seems to lose his efficiency in the ratio of his genius; the literary gift, instead of aiding, actually antagonizing the aptitude for public business.
The statesman may not be fastidious.

The poet, the artist, must be always so.