Nothing certifies the prevalence of this taste in the people
more than the circulation of the poems, -- one would say, most
incongruously united by some bookseller, -- of Coleridge, Shelley,
and Keats. The only unity is in the subjectiveness and the
aspiration common to the three writers. Shelley, though a poetic
mind, is never a poet. His muse is uniformly imitative; all his
poems composite. A good English scholar he is, with ear, taste, and
memory, much more, he is a character full of noble and prophetic
traits; but imagination, the original, authentic fire of the bard, he
has not. He is clearly modern, and shares with Richter,
Chateaubriand, Manzoni, and Wordsworth, the feeling of the infinite,
which so labors for expression in their different genius. But all
his lines are arbitrary, not necessary. When we read poetry, the
mind asks, -- Was this verse one of twenty which the author might
have written as well; or is this what that man was created to say?
But, whilst every line of the true poet will be genuine, he is in a
boundless power and freedom to say a million things.
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69